Ethereum's Layer 2 track

Editor's Note: This article comes fromBlue Fox Notes (ID: lanhubiji), reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

Blue Fox Notes (ID: lanhubiji)

Blue Fox Notes (ID: lanhubiji)

, reprinted by Odaily with authorization.

With the recent high transfer fees of Ethereum, Layer 1 of Ethereum is obviously not enough. At present, people's eyes are focused on DeFi, and people may not have noticed that with the increase of Ethereum fees, the daily activities of dApps in other areas of Ethereum are declining, especially in the field of games.

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Ethereum urgently needs to scale, which has been an old problem since 2017. However, after more than 3 years of hard work, there are more and more layer 2 solutions, which is dazzling. It is becoming more and more critical to figure out the nature of the project on this track.

Gaming dApps have a large number of small payments, and the high Ethereum fees make it impossible for these users to continue playing. The value of each payment may be a few dollars or more than a dozen dollars, but the cost of a transfer is often a few dollars, which is too much for ordinary users, which directly leads to a decline in the daily activities of users of Ethereum-based game dApps. If you are a user of the Ethereum dApp game Sorare (Blue Fox Notes: Sorare is a football simulation game based on Ethereum, users can trade player cards), it is hard to imagine a user buying a piece worth less than 10 Euro cards while willing to pay up to $5 more.

(As the gas fee of Ethereum rises, the daily activities of Top5 Ethereum games decrease, Source: DappRadar)

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(As the gas fee of Ethereum rises, the daily activities of Top5 Ethereum games decrease, Source: DappRadar)

(Comparison of daily activities of non-Ethereum-based games and Ethereum games, Source: DappRadar)

From the above data, it can be seen that Ethereum-based game dApps have a very obvious correlation with changes in their fees, while other non-Ethereum-based games have a slight increase in DAU during the same period, which further proves the impact of fees on user behavior.

And this kind of situation, with the continuous development of DeFi, with the additional issuance and circulation of USDT on Ethereum, this situation of high gas fees may exist for a long time, before Layer 2 and PoS are not mature (Blue Fox Note: press The current development progress of Ethereum, sharding is estimated to be at least 2 years), this may be the best breakthrough opportunity for other public chains. For example, for EOS, if it can seize this rare opportunity, it may be able to differentiate itself from Ethereum. EOS should not only pay attention to Voice, but perhaps should pay more attention to breakthroughs in game dApps.

In addition to EOS, other public chains should seize the opportunity, first strategically abandon DeFi, gather in game dApps or other breakthrough fields, and then enter DeFi in turn. Perhaps this is a better strategy than following Behind the leader Ethereum, the probability of such a chance of winning is relatively small.

Technical trade-offs for Layer 2 tracks

The Layer 2 project is a scalability solution created to alleviate the plight of Layer 1. However, not all Layer 2 solutions have the same solution path. There are various trade-offs between different Layer 2 schemes. They differ in various aspects such as security, performance, usability, etc. These differences are enough to have a profound impact on their future. For investors, these differences are also an important basis for selecting projects.

Furthermore, these differences also lead to their possible applicability to different use cases and scenarios in the future. The current Layer 2 mainly includes the following categories: Plasma, Sidechain, State Channels, Opitmistic rollups, ZkRollup, Vadium. So many technical paths are dazzling, making it difficult for investors and developers to understand at once.

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(Comprehensive comparison of the six major layer2 technologies, Source:Alex Gluchowski)

It can be seen from here that zkRollup is the best in terms of security, followed by Optimistic rollups, but they also make the biggest trade-off in terms of performance, with the lowest performance in all layer 2 (in the case of ETH1.0); In terms of performance, State channels and Validum are the highest, but security is also sacrificed; in terms of usability, State channels perform best. It can be seen from the above that, with the same dilemma as Layer 1, Layer 2 also has trade-offs in terms of security, performance, and technology implementation costs. It is impossible to want everything.

So, when we see Layer 2, they may be completely different Layer 2, and their nature is not the same. In other words, the same Layer 2, their future prospects are not the same. So, what Layer2 projects are worth paying attention to?

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