Ethereum 2.0 Launch: The Necessity and Prospects of Layer 2 Solutions

The Ethereum 2.0 Phase 0 beacon chain officially launched its genesis block on the evening of December 1, marking the official start of Ethereum 2.0's journey. For the Ethereum community, this is undoubtedly an important milestone, signifying a significant step towards accelerating Ethereum's transition from PoW to PoS, and further enhancing the vision of scaling capabilities.

However, the anticipated multi-year rollout period for Ethereum 2.0, the repeatedly adjusted roadmap, and the controversial migration costs have posed numerous challenges for this significant upgrade. Meanwhile, the Ethereum community has seen the emergence of various Layer 2 scaling solutions such as Rollup, Plasma, and Validium, each with its own advantages in terms of scalability, implementation timeline, and engineering difficulty.

In the medium to short term, Layer 2 solutions seem to be a more attractive option and may even become an important part of Ethereum's long-term evolution in the future. This article will explore the necessity and value of Layer 2 in the context of Ethereum 2.0, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of various Layer 2 solutions and the current state of the ecosystem.

Layer2 may become a long-term partner of Ethereum infrastructure

For a long time, Layer 2 has been seen as a transitional solution for public chains to mature. However, recent news shows that the Ethereum core development team has confirmed that the priority of the Layer 2 solution Rollup should be higher than the originally planned sharding solution. This reflects that sharding technology is unlikely to meet demand in the short term - it is expected to take 2-3 years to be implemented and can only bring about a 64-fold increase in TPS. In contrast, existing Rollup solutions can achieve performance improvements of up to 100 times.

From a design philosophy perspective, keeping Layer 1 simple while building complex functionalities on Layer 2 has become a common approach in the blockchain field. This means that Ethereum is more likely to maintain a long-term coexistence relationship with Layer 2, rather than just serving as a short-term auxiliary. Many important applications, such as Uniswap and Synthetix, have publicly supported Layer 2 solutions, further highlighting the important position of Layer 2 within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Layer2 solutions each have their own advantages, Rollup is the most favored.

Currently, the mainstream Ethereum Layer2 solutions include state channels, sidechains, Plasma, Validium, ZK Rollup, and Optimistic Rollup, among others. They differ in terms of hosting methods, computation and storage locations, and verification mechanisms. For Ethereum-based DApp projects, choosing the appropriate Layer2 solution based on specific needs may be a wiser choice.

From community discussions, the Rollup series solutions are the most likely to be widely adopted due to their support from large applications, rapid development progress, and ideal scalability. Among them, Optimistic Rollup has attracted significant attention due to the support from DeFi giants such as Synthetix, Uniswap, and Chainlink.

However, the interoperability issues between different Layer 2 solutions are also worth noting. Taking Rollup as an example, the two solutions of ZK and Optimistic are currently unable to interoperate, which may weaken the composability of the DeFi ecosystem. How to maintain the overall synergy of the ecosystem while improving performance will be an important challenge faced by Layer 2 solutions.

Overall, as the Ethereum ecosystem becomes increasingly large, the difficulty of foundational transformations also rises. In this context, Layer 2 solutions are likely to become long-term partners and important infrastructure for Ethereum, playing a key role in future development.