layer 2s

Ethereum layer 2’s will continue to have diverse approaches to scaling — Vitalik Buterin

October 31, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin pens an analysis of Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem, highlighting diverse approaches to scaling the smart contract blockchain.

The Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem is likely to continue evolving with diverse technological approaches, according to co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

The co-founder of the smart contract blockchain unpacked the current landscape of Ethereum’s scaling ecosystem on his personal blog, with several layer-2 protocols differing in their approaches to bring greater scaling capacity, lower costs and increased security.

As Buterin highlighted, Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) rollups pioneered by Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll and more recently, Kakarot and Taiko, have drastically improved the respective security of their solutions.

Different types of layer 2shttps://t.co/ry4VTtWhJ1
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) October 31, 2023

Meanwhile, “sidechain projects” like Polygon have also developed their own rollup solutions. Buterin also highlights “almost-EVMs” like zkSync, extensions like Arbitrum Stylus and zero-knowledge proof pioneers Starknet as important players driving scaling technology for the ecosystem:

“One of the inevitable consequences of this is that we are seeing a trend of layer 2 projects becoming more heterogeneous. I expect this trend to continue, for a few key reasons.”

Buterin notes that some projects currently existing as independent layer 1s are looking to bring themselves closer to the Ethereum ecosystem and potentially become ecosystem layer 2s.

This type of transition remains difficult, as an “all at once” approach would cause a decrease in usability given that technology is not at a stage where it can be completely included in rollup technology. Meanwhile, postponing such a transition runs the risk of “sacrificing momentum and being too late to be meaningful.”

Buterin also notes that some centralized, non-Ethereum projects want to give users greater security assurances and are looking to blockchain-based solutions. Historically, these types of projects would have looked to “permissioned consortium chains” to achieve this:

“Realistically, they probably only need a “halfway-house” level of decentralization. Additionally, their often very high level of throughput makes them unsuitable even for rollups, at least in the short term.”

Lastly, Buterin considers non-financial applications like games and social media platforms that want to be decentralized but do not need high levels of security. Highlighting a social media use case, Buterin notes that different parts of the app would require separate functionality:

“Rare and high-value activity like username registration and account recovery should be done on a rollup, but frequent and low-value activity like posts and votes need less security.“

He adds that a chain failure leading to a user’s post disappearing would be an “acceptable cost,” while a similar failure leading to the loss of an account would be far more serious.

Buterin also notes that the costs associated with paying for rollup fees might not be acceptable for non-blockchain users, while previous blockchain users are used to paying far higher prices for on-chain interactions.

*An excerpt from Buterin’s latest blog post on the Ethereum ecosystem titled “Different types of layer 2s.” Source: vitalik.eth.limo*

The Ethereum co-founder then delves into the trade-offs between different rollup solutions and systems that offer varying scaling capabilities to the ecosystem. The “connectedness” to Ethereum hinges on the security of withdrawing to Ethereum from layer 2s and the security of reading data from the Ethereum blockchain.

Buterin notes that high security and tight connectedness are important for some applications, while others require something looser in exchange for greater scalability:

“In many cases, starting with something looser today, and moving to a tighter coupling over the next decade as technology improves, may well be optimal.”

Ethereum’s next scheduled hard fork is set to introduce EIP-4844, commonly referred to as “proto-dank sharding.” The EIP is expected to drastically increase the amount of data availability of the network. Buterin also notes that improvements in data compression enable greater functionality.

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NFT-optimized Palm Network to become a Polygon ZK Supernet

July 27, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Candy Digital

The Ethereum sidechain will transition to a proof-of-stake network this August and become a full-fledged layer 2 based on Polygon’s zero-knowledge protocol in 2024.

Nonfungible token-focused blockchain Palm Network is about to become a great deal more accessible to users, with plans to transition into being a customized Polygon blockchain.

According to a July 26 announcement, Palm Network will soon become a Polygon (MATIC) ZK Supernet, which will see minting, trading, and collecting NFTs becoming more readily available to its users.

Additionally, Palm Network will become interoperable with Ethereum and the rest of the Polygon 2.0 ecosystem.

PALM on the journey to become ZKL2 with polygon Technology!

Don't miss a talk with @lerdiedabirdie from ED @palmfdn and @sandeepnailwal , the Founder of @0xPolygonLabs.
Set your reminder now! ️https://t.co/pRDSFbtNaC pic.twitter.com/SutmzzqTMS
— Palmfdn (@palmfdn) July 27, 2023

Polygon “supernets” are customizable blockchains that are created using Polygon consensus software, while the term “ZK Supernet” refers to a network that uses zero-knowledge proofs to process deposits and withdrawals from Ethereum.

Palm Network’s transition to a Polygon Supernet will take place in two stages. On August 23, it will transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism network. Then sometime in 2024 it will transition into a ZK-based layer-2.

Palm Network has partnered with NFT marketplace Candy Digital, which carries licensed NFTs from NASCAR, Major League Baseball, Netflix, Warner Brothers, WWE and other brands. The digital art distributor HENI is also built on the network.

*Candy Digital marketplace on Palm Network. Source: Candy Digital*

Palm is currently an Ethereum (ETH) sidechain, which means that it relies entirely on its own nodes for security.

Once the transition process is completed, transfers between Palm Network and Ethereum will be processed using Polygon’s zero-knowledge proof protocols, making their security partially dependent on the Ethereum blockchain and therefore potentially more secure.

Polygon co-founder Jordi Baylina praised Palm’s move, saying that it will lead to greater accessibility for users without sacrificing security:

“By leveraging Polygon Supernets technology, developers of Palm Network can preserve the user experience amid even the highest network activity while minimizing the gas costs for its community — resulting in a significantly more accessible and democratic ecosystem.”

Over the past few months, the Polygon team has been working to create an ecosystem of multiple ZK supernets joined together through its software, a system they have referred to as “Polygon 2.0.”

They face competition from Optimism’s “Superchain,” a similar multichain vision based on the OP Stack software. ZkSync has also announced that it will be building a multi-network ecosystem made up of “Hyperchains.”

Collect this article as an NFT to preserve this moment in history and show your support for independent journalism in the crypto space.

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Open-source advocates launch OP Stack testnet to fund public goods

July 7, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The Public Goods Network from Gitcoin promises to redirect most net sequencer fees into public goods, instead of giving them to token holders or developers.

Layer-2 blockchain Public Goods Network launched a testnet on July 7, promising to spend “the vast majority of net sequencer fees” on public goods instead of paying them out to the development team or token holders, according to an announcement from the network’s developers. In economics, a “public good” is a good that cannot be produced for profit because it is difficult to exclude non-payers from its consumption.

The new network was developed by the same team that created Gitcoin, a project that seeks to raise funds for open-source projects. Public Goods Network is being built using the OP Stack, meaning that it can become part of the proposed “Superchain” that will include Optimism and Base networks.

Okay Devs,

Overjoyed to announce @pgn_eth, a community-led L2 focused on sustainable funding for public goods

Check this out if you're building anything related to public goods, because I have testnet Eth for you

⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://t.co/b0mdS1Symw
— zakk.eth (is on a quest ) (@0xZakk) July 6, 2023

According to the project's documents, Public Goods Network will be an Optimistic layer-2 rollup of Ethereum. This type of network generally uses a profit-making centralized sequencer to batch transactions and periodically submit them to Ethereum.

The Gitcoin team says their new network will reinvest “the vast majority” of this profit into public goods projects. In their view, this is necessary to prevent venture capital firms and others who are motivated by “rent seeking” from capturing the value provided by layer-2s:

“Rather than fill blockspace for other organizations who may be captured by VCs, or other rent seeking motivations, we believe we should fill our own blockspace such that we can reallocate those funds to further the Alliance’s objective of growing and funding public goods.”

Gitcoin claims that the sequencer fees will not go directly to them. Instead, it will go to an “alliance” being formed based on a “newly defined governance model.” In a Twitter thread accompanying the announcement, the team said the network’s long-term goal is to allow projects to be funded directly by sequencer fees, without a middleman, using the EIP-6969 standard.

The current Public Goods network is connected to the Ethereum Sepolia network through an official bridge, allowing developers to test out apps using funds from Sepolia’s various faucets.

Gitcoin originally rose to prominence by using quadratic funding to provide grants for open-source projects and other public goods. Gitcoin’s head of impact, Azeem Khan, joined the advisory board for crypto fund Foresight Ventures in June.

Polygon spinoff launches testnet bridge to allow for low-cost layer 2s

July 7, 2023 Coin Telegraph

avail

Avail launched a bridge to transmit data availability attestations to Ethereum, potentially allowing for lower fees on some layer 2s.

Blockchain network Avail has launched a testnet data availability bridge to Ethereum, according to a July 7 announcement. Once testing is completed, the bridge will allow developers to easily create “validiums” or low-cost layer 2s that do not store full transaction data on Ethereum, the announcement stated.

Avail was originally created by Polygon Labs, but was spun off as an independent project in March. Polygon’s co-founder, Anurag Arjun, is also the founder of Avail.

*Avail Block Explorer. Source: Avail.tools*

Layer-2 rollup networks like Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon zkEVM, and zkSync Era lower transaction fees by batching transactions into compressed “rollups” and periodically adding them to the base layer. However, because these networks must write all the transactions to the base layer, they often have higher transaction fees than layer-1 competitors.

To get around this problem, some networks have opted to write only the validation proofs of each transaction to the base layer, while storing the full transaction data off-chain. This produces a type of network called a “validium.” For example, StarkEx features a validium mode that stores data with a data availability committee (DAC) instead of on Ethereum. Polygon proof-of-stake may become a validium that stores its data on a proof-of-stake chain in 2024.

According to the announcement, the new bridge allows developers to create custom validiums quickly and easily by storing their transaction data on the Avail network, eliminating the need to create their own DAC or proof-of-stake data availability network. When a user tries to withdraw cryptocurrency from layer 2 back to the base layer of Ethereum, the Avail bridge will transmit an attestation that the data is available on Avail, allowing the withdrawal to occur.

“Today’s launch of the Data Availability attestation bridge marks a major advancement in our mission to optimize blockchain scalability and efficiency,” said Arjun. “By enabling rollup constructions to run in validium, optimistic chains, and volition modes, we are not only reducing costs but also paving the way for a more inclusive and efficient layer-2 and layer-3 ecosystem.”

Arjun previously told Cointelegraph that data availability solutions would become essential to the Web3 space as zero-knowledge proof rollups are more widely used.

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