Vitalik has always been committed to encouraging the development of Ethereum L2, and L2 has also experienced rapid expansion in the past year or so. According to defillama data, the Ethereum mainnet currently accounts for 60% of the TVL rankings of all chains on the entire network, while L2 Arbitrum, Polygon, and Optimism account for 3.94%, 1.27%, and 1.15% respectively. The top ten TVL rankings are already occupied by Layer 2 chains. Three seats.
This year, highly anticipated events such as StarkNets airdrop and Blasts launch on the mainnet have pushed the markets attention to Layer 2 to an unprecedented high. The ZK-EVM rollup ecosystem, represented by StarkNet, Arbitrum, Optimism and Scroll, has developed rapidly and has made great progress in improving blockchain security and increasing transaction speed. In recent years, in order to maintain the purity of the Ethereum chain, Vitalik has always supported giving Layer 2 more complex functions.
This concept that has been adhered to for five years has been shaken today.
On February 22, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in reply to a user’s tweet, “Honestly, compared to five years ago, I am more interested in simplifying L1, even if the sacrifice is at the expense of (building) a more complex L2. ” Confidence in this concept has also been reduced by 3 times. The challenge is that when a trade-off can be made between the risk of L1 bugs and the risk of L2 bugs, its not actually clear whether the latter is better! ” He further explained, “If there is a problem with L1, developers only need a day to recover; and if there is a problem with L2, it may cause the user to lose a lot of assets. Therefore, it is worth adding some complex functions to L1 to reduce the code of L2 burden and makes L2 relatively simple.”
Just when the development of Layer 2 seemed to be booming, why did Vitalik suddenly feel so emotional? Why did he, who had previously strongly supported the development of Layer 2, suddenly change his views? Is it really because of security issues that triggered such emotions and changes, or is there another reason? In this regard, Rhythm BlockBeats has compiled some industry KOL/Builder’s views on the development of Ethereum Layer 2 as follows:
Jason Chen Jian (independent researcher)
Just after Vitalik wrote the article Keep the chain minimalist and dont overload the Ethereum consensus in May last year, today Vitalik expressed that it is worth adding very complex functions to Ethereum to reduce the burden on Layer 2. After all, What prompted Vitalik to change his thinking this year? I think a very important reason is the impact of modularity on the Ethereum system.
In fact, it is precisely because Ethereum’s strategy of wanting to be the underlying chain gives room for modular development. To a certain extent, it can be said that it has cultivated its own potential competitors. In last year’s article, I also wrote about the beautiful ending of Ethereum. It is to become a bottom-level chain that no longer has direct contact with users and only does core value businesses such as consensus and DA, and leaves the complex business of the upper layer, such as figuring out how to mass adoption, to the Layer 2 people. Its like the relationship between the central bank and local banks. The central bank only does supervision and regulation, while local banks are responsible for attracting deposits and opening branches.
But what should we do once the central bank’s control over local banks is weak? What should we do once local banks no longer report and settle with the central bank normally, or even issue their own local currency?
Therefore, Ethereum has split itself to a certain extent, and this splitting process is also equivalent to the process of active modularization. Decoupling its own capabilities gives third-party modular development opportunities. According to the public The chain level is divided into execution layer, settlement layer, DA layer, and consensus layer from top to bottom. The first three layers have corresponding Fuel, DYM, and TIA, cannibalizing Ethereum layer by layer.
The business competitiveness of third-party modularization lies in how fast and economical it is, so Ethereum must accelerate its own changes, including the real ones such as the Cancun upgrade to reduce the DA fee of Layer 2, and the virtual ones such as the name of legitimacy. , and what Vitalik said today is based on the ideological guidelines that can make Ethereum more complex so that Layer 2 can be simplified.
In any case, the core value security of Ethereum is unparalleled, including the stateless client to be carried out in the subsequent Osaka upgrade, which will once again improve the security of Ethereum. This will be the core competitiveness of Ethereum, the consensus layer. It cannot be modularized. With the Cancun upgrade reducing the gas fee of Layer 2 by more than 10 times and strengthening the competitiveness of the DA layer, Ethereum is taking back territory layer by layer.
Qi Zhou (Founder of EthStorageQuarkChain)
Can so-called ZKEVM mitigate L2 security risks? If a bug occurs in a circuit shared by Layer 1 or Layer 2 ZKeVM, and L2 is attacked as a result, L1 will also be affected, so the L1 fixer (perhaps RE-ORG) can immediately step in to fix it.
Mindao (Founder of Dforce)
Ethereum L2 is redefining L1; Bitcoin L2 is redefining L2. L2s modularization, parallel EVM, and economic security output (re-staking) are all designed to grab the job and narrative of the new public chain, and L2 is upgraded to the new L1. Bitcoin and Ethereum have become true Layer 0.
26 x 14-Merlin (7 updao Lianchuang)
God V started acting like a monster again. If it engages in evm like this, it will become more fragile, giving Sol and Sui more opportunities.
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