I agree as eth has a head start in the market and has not stopped adding to its protocol.
ETH is like a major airport that you need access to if you are a global airline
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I pretty much agree exactly with what your take is on the future of Eth and scalability. Obviously, no one can know for certain but ever since I discovered ZKrollups, it seems like they are the best available solution for Ethereumâs scalability problem. They will likely get better with time and so far seem to be very promising. Only time will tell what plays out!
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I can only assume the âmain layer oneâ means the network that is most widely-used for public services, in which case I do not believe for a moment it will be Ethereum. Even as the most popular layer one network for private finance in North America and Europe I seriously doubt it, because their technical debt seems so overwhelming and it isnât governed in such a way that allows this to be tackled very easily. This early in the game, I donât think the first-mover advantage will amount to much, but it may become that dinosaur technology that will always have an important niche, in the same way the Unix operating system does. ZK rollups clearly have an important role to play in Ethereumâs future and similar innovations will likely be used on other block chains. I am most keen (bullish, if you will) on layer 2 solutions that are completely transparent to end users.
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Tried zkSync, it easy and fast to use. Seem zkRollups are the future for scaling.
I have greatly appreciated this lesson since it is something that is very hard to understand and yet is extremely important for the future of crypto. Nevertheless, even after going through all of the reading material, I still feel that I do not completely understand the differences between the different solutions and how they work exactly. I think that this could and should be the subject of its own course, perhaps narrated by Ivan himself since he did such a good job in Bitcoin 101.
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Also related to L1s, L2s are the fees cost.
ETH is the unit of account of Ethereum that is used for paying gas.
In L2s is cheaper.
The users of smart contracts wants less fee but if ETH grown in terms of value in USD with the same fees they are gonna pay more.
The investors in ETH hope the value goes up.
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Iâm taking your word on this one. I need to do some research on the zksyncâs to understand it completely,
so I wonât be able to have a good discussion with anyone on this. However; I will definitely scroll through the responses to see what everyone else has to say about it.
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It is really difficult to know exactly what will happen to the Ethereum blockchain although Eth 2.0 will introduce sharding that alone wouldnât solve the increasing txns in the mempool, as more adoption to blockchain happens and people will be well aware of its capabilities there will be more and more transactions, the ethereum scalability solution on its own is a huge topic with many disagreements and arguments in place rollups may seem to be a solution, however their viability is still being questioned to this day, testnet deployment is way different than mainnet in theory those may work however using rollups can have its flaws on the mainnet. ZK-Rollups seem to be a incomplete solution at the moment Optimism rollups have flaws with their slow transaction speeds and withdrawal times and things could take up weeks, there is no EVM compatibility on zk-rollups and you also need to run higher spec machines which is another issue too only time will tell zk-sync seems to have EVM compatibility though both optimistic rollups and zk-rollups are growing at a fast rate and are experimenting with their technology.
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I also feel the same. it is alot of new information to take in and understand. From the reading material, I get that ETH 2.0/sharding will help with the tps but not enough to meet the demand out there, and thatâs where the L2âs help out as far as scaling, transaction times and lesser fees. I hope Iâm understanding at least this part correctly, lol 
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i know the future will be any EVM, right now ETH 2.0 has the lead;
ZeroKnoledge rollups; as i understand is smart contract that bundle many (hundreds, thousands) transactions into one single to (reduce blockchain size and improve efficiency and scalability): reduce the amount of transactions and also gas fees.
optimism and arbitrum are not my favorite ( perhaps i donât understand them that well)
ZKsync ; basically do L2 transactions first then bundle into a big 1 L1 transaction
the other two i know and got some attention are:
loopring with LRC token that allow to do smart contract computation off-chain. i am not sure if this would be popular but transaction from the Ethereum blockchain https://loopring.io/#/
the other one is immutable X IMX which is a ZK rollup applicable for games and NFT promising 0 gas fees https://www.immutable.com/
well i donât have a favorite but i like IMX due to the fact that it will boost NFT and adoption to users who donât care about all technicism with fees and gwei, etc.
i randomly find another ZK-rollup https://starkware.co/starkex/ perhaps it is similar to ZKsync; however these starkware is used by DX/DY⌠so pretty promising
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It makes sense that Eth2 along with all of the L2 solutions will make the EVM ecosystem extremely scalable. Right now, Ethereum only processes 15 TPS. After the move to proof of stake (and the additional 63 shard chains), EVM will supposedly be able to process 100,000 TPS. Nonetheless, most of the long term scalability of Ethereum will be possible because of the many different L2 solutions. With all of the rollups and sidechains, the scalability of Ethereum will be exponentially higher.
In terms of security/decentralization, most of the risks probably be come with the layer 2 chains, as they are much smaller. I agree that CK rollups are better than Optimistic rollups, because the Optimistic rollups donât seam to have a strong mechanism for weeding out fraudulent transactions (they are too optimistic about every transaction being legitimate). Overall, the security and decentralization of Ethereum using POS will probably never be as rock solid as a chain like BTC, but thatâs the trade off necessary for having a platform that can host thousands of Dapps.
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I find all the future advancements in this space to be quite interesting, with everything that I have studied Iâm looking forward to Ethereums 2.0 launch. Hopefully that happens this year as stated by Vitalek Buterin. I gained a far better understanding of what it takes to implement these changes and why it has taken this long. Between plasma chains, side chains, as well as rollups, Iâm fascinated by the zk rollups. However, optimistic rollups leaving out data in their rollup seems like that is a problem in the making, would have to agree with your choice as zk being the better formula, at least long term. Only time will tell but right now fascinating stuff.
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I also have to agrre here. I think for now it looks like the future will be ETH 2.0 with sharding and also ZK- rollups
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Increase of demand and mainstream crypto adoption in developed countries with clear regulatory and compliances in place will funnnel billions, if not trillions, of $$$ int multiple layer 1 chains.
that being said, ETH 2.0 is gonna start having scaling issues without layer 2 solutions to address the ongoing growth of the crypto industry and its growing demand in every industry you could think of (both for logistics, tracking, retail, games, etc)
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With the Ethereum Merge just around the corner, there is more and more talk about L2s, and especially ZK roll- ups.
Ethereum 2.0 will improve the deflationary problem that ETH has, but not the scalability problems, thatâs why L2 solutions are so necessary.
Within these L2 solutions my favorites are:
-The ZK roll-up StarkWare, for all the support they are receiving during its development from the Ethereum Foundation, even subsidizing it with 12 million in the beginning.
-ZkSync, for its ease of use for users, and also for the great support it is receiving lately from the entire crypto community.
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I personally am not a fan of Ethereum. I think itâs best to develop layer 1. Sharding even looks interesting , although I think there is a platform that offers a better solution on layer 1 (and no need for layer 2). My fear is that layer 2 will destroy the decentralisation aspect and permissions. The best looking of the L2 solutions discussed is zkSync.
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I had experienced my self how Eth fees sky rocketed throughout 2020. We all knew Ethereum was victim of its success. I started to understand DeFi by mid 2020, especially when I mint for the first time some DAI using ETH. The fees were manageable, but at the end of the year was not longer possible. I remember having paid over $200 in fees just to mint 2000 DAI. Early 2021 Polygon launched its Ethereum solution and there I was able to benefit from DeFi, this time by using AAVE.
Having told my experience I will comment about this theme. Ethereum is after BTC one of the most secure and decentralized blockchain, but because of the so called blockchain trilemma, had issues with scalability that took us to the point of those sky rocketted fees I experienced. The polygon solution (a side chain) is by my understanding a secure and scalable that sacrifices the decentralization attribute. Even if thatâs not so desirable because we expose our funds to a small set of validators, more likely all of them withinn the same server, however itâs necessary in order to help scale Ethereum. It wouldnât make any sense to make a sidechain alike Ethereum (decentraliza and secure). Polygon became the most widely used scaled solution for Ethereum, but I have witnessed the arrival of Optimism and Arbitrum, both are Optimistic Rollups. Thanks to this course, I finally understand what rollups are, but I donât grasp the difference between the later two scaling solutions. I canât tell either which one is better. I guess Arbitrum is killing.
Meanwhile Ethereum mainnet (L1) is advancing towards the sharding that perhaps we will have sometime in 2024 or 2025, by what I have been reading weâre close to have ZK-Rollups. I believe this particular and highly important improvement is going much faster than expected. I conclude that weâre at the brink of the mass adoption of cryptocurrency and Ethereum will be a major player. Besides these advances, there are other things at the macroeconomic level that are confluyen meanwhile people are suffering for the losses caused by bad actors in the crypto industry (Celsius, 3AC, Terra, FTX, etc).
I think Ethereum ecosystem of layer 2 will grow exponentially. Polygon created a utility token called COVO. DEX on the polygon network, surge 65% past weeks on uniswap V3. Offers DEFI traders, investors fast and low fees up to 50% leverage. Polygon rewards them in three ways 30% all generated Protocol fees, paid in magic and escrow COVO(escovo) tokens can be staked or vested. Mass adoption of companies like Disney are using polygon and Square enix partnership with polygon side chain EVM for gaming.
So at this time Ethereum 2.0 was released in September 15, 2022. From what is see fees on the network arenât any cheaper. I think this will change when they start sharding in the surge phase ethereum will be widely available for more users becasue of low fees. Though i think that zk roll ups is the goal to reach when it come to finding the solution to the scalabililty trilema. On L2 BEAT I see that the top chains for L2s are Arbitrum One & Optimism that have highest TVL on the website and are Optimistic Rollups.
Ethereum 2.0 will improve the deflationary problem that ETH has,
L2 solutions are so necessary for reducing the transaction cost for now.
I use bridges to do things on layer2 before bridgeing back to L1