Whereas Ethereum-based layer-2 options have been centered on hyperscaling the community, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes layer 3s will serve a far completely different goal — offering “custom-made performance.”
Buterin shared his ideas in a Saturday submit, providing three “visions” of what layer 3s might be used for sooner or later.
The Ethereum co-founder stated a 3rd layer on the blockchain is smart provided that it offers a unique perform to layer 2s, which have been used primarily to boost scaling by way of zero-knowledge (zk) Rollup expertise:
“A 3-layer scaling structure that consists of stacking the identical scaling scheme on high of itself typically doesn’t work nicely. Rollups on high of rollups, the place the 2 layers of rollups use the identical expertise, actually don’t.”
However, “a three-layer structure the place the second layer and third layer have completely different functions, nonetheless, can work,” stated Buterin.
One in every of layer 3’s use circumstances can be what Buterin describes as “custom-made performance” — referencing privacy-based functions which might make the most of zk proofs to submit privacy-preserving transactions to layer 2.
One other use case can be “custom-made scaling” for specialised functions that don’t need to use the Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) to do computation.
Buterin additionally stated that layer 3 might be used for “weakly-trusted” scaling via Validiums, a zk-proof expertise. Buterin stated this can be helpful for “enterprise blockchain” functions by utilizing “a centralized server that runs a validium prover and repeatedly commits hashes to chain.”
However, Buterin added that it’s nonetheless unclear whether or not layer-3 buildings might be extra environment friendly than the present layer-2 mannequin in relation to constructing custom-made functions on Ethereum.
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“One attainable argument for the three-layer mannequin over the two-layer mannequin is: a three-layer mannequin permits a complete sub-ecosystem to exist inside a single rollup, which permits cross-domain operations inside that ecosystem to occur very cheaply, while not having to undergo the costly layer 1,” Buterin stated.
However, Buterin stated that as a result of cross-chain transactions may be executed simply and cheaply between two layer 2s which have dedicated to the identical chain, constructing layer 3s could not essentially enhance the effectivity of the community.
Buterin’s feedback on attainable layer 3 use circumstances come as StarkWare’s newly produced recursive validity proofs seem to have presumably put an finish to Ethereum’s scalability issues.
Declan Fox, the product supervisor at Ethereum software program agency ConsenSys, just lately informed Cointelegraph that “with recursive rollups and proofs, we theoretically can infinitely scale.”
These recursive proofs have been nicely examined in manufacturing, with StarkWare co-founder Eli-Ben Sasson just lately telling Cointelegraph that its recursive proofs have rolled up as many as 600,000 nonfungible token mints in a single transaction on Immutable X and that 60 million transactions may quickly be on the playing cards “with extra engineering and tweaking.”
