The Ethereum community has been shot in recent weeks, with members raising the alarm that the chain will lose its competitive advantage if it does not solve certain basic design problems.
A key objective of indignation was the fragmentation of the layer-2. In recent years, Ethereum has adopted a road 2 -scale roadmap – a plan that has encouraged the development of third -party auxiliary networks called “layer 2” – to help evolve the basic ecosystem Ethereum. The unloading activity on these restart networks has contributed to reducing costs and improving the speeds of end users, but it led to a massive and deeply fragmented ecosystem of layer 2.
Although the 2 -networks layer all the data goes back to Ethereum, they often find it difficult to communicate directly with each other, which means that the assets and the data between them can become expensive and bulky. There is also the risk of centralized sequencers: Reliance to black boxes controlled by the company to transmit the transaction data between the blockchain layers.
While layer 2 chains continue to proliferate, some Ethereum developers push Rollup Tech which adopts a new approach to safety and interoperability: “based rollups”.
Rollups based
The rollers based on most existing rolls because they move the execution tasks – such as treatment transactions – behind layer 1 of Ethereum rather than handling them on a separate layer 2 network.
When someone is working on a layer 2 roll, its transaction is processed via a component called “sequencer”. The sequencer between several transactions and subjects them to Ethereum for the regulations. In most Rollups today, this sequencer is centralized, which means that a single entity (generally the company that has built the Rollup) controls the order and publication of transactions.
Centralized sequencers are currently a subject of debate in the Ethereum community. Although sequencers provide efficiency and generate income for Rollup operators by strategically ordering transactions, they also introduce a single failure point. A defective or malicious sequencer can delay or manipulate transactions, which raises concerns about censorship and reliability.
The rolls based on it avoid this vulnerability by using the integrated sequencing of Ethereum – its massive community of validators – rather than a single centralized sequencer.
The evolution of the road 2 roadmap 2
In 2022, the co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin explained his vision of a roadmap centered on the Rollup. The plan proposed to use layer 2 rollers to go up the high costs of the base chain and slow transaction speeds.
Different rollers use different strategies to maintain costs and increase speeds, but they are all designed to maintain decentralization and security – which means (in theory) the networks should not be executed centralized, and transactions that They directed in Ethereum are free from falsification.
Rolls like Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, Zksync and Blast quickly grew up to take charge of the more important transaction volumes than Ethereum itself. According to L2Beat, there are currently 140 layers of layer 2 live, but the operating experience between them – the passage of assets and other data between networks – has become awkward. As Ethereum becomes greater and that layer 2 networks become more integrated into its operation, improving communication between the layer -2 – in other words, the improvement of “composibility” – has become more important than ever.
Since the based rollers share the sequencer of the layer 1 (sometimes called “offering” layer-1), they can call on intelligent contracts on other rollers based in seconds, which facilitates access and data exchange on the layer. 2S.
“They effectively share a sequencer with each other and also with the layer-1 and which allows the sequencer now to coordinate the messages passing between different rolls based, while the transmission of messages normally occurs asynchronous,” said Ben Fisch, CEO of Espresso Systems, in an interview with Coindesk.
Since the based rollers all use the integrated sequencing of Ethereum, they can instantly interact, in terms of blockchain, all in the same Ethereum block.1.1
“You could, in the space of a block of Ethereum, remove the active ingredients based on the rollers, do something in layer 1, place the active ingredients, do something in layer 2 and remove the active ingredients again” said Fisch in Coindesk.
Some disadvantages
Some projects seek to use the technology based, but only one based Rollup, Taiko, is currently live.
While rollers like Taiko have clear advantages, they will have to overcome certain technical obstacles before they can be more widely adopted.
A major challenge is the generation of evidence. When a based rolup submits transaction data to Ethereum, it must generate and publish evidence every 12 seconds: Ethereum block time. Currently, layer 2 rolls use two types of evidence: zero knowledge of knowledge (ZK), which finalize in a few minutes, and optimistic evidence, which take up to seven days to extinguish potential fraud.
For rollers based on effectively, generation of evidence should be aligned with Ethereum block time – a significant technical jump. However, Fisch says that a breakthrough on this front could be “imminent”.
The other trap is the producers of Ethereum blocks, or “Layer-1 proponents”. In the rollers based, these proponents take up the role of sequencing transactions. But their main motivation is not necessarily equity – its profit
“Layer 1 offerors are not trusting entities who work in the interest of La Couche-2, they are economically motivated to earn as much money as possible,” said Fisch. “They can therefore confirm certain transactions for end users, then see a MeV opportunity, which leads them to publish something completely different.”
The MEV, or maximum extractable value, refers to the practice of reorganizing transactions to maximize profit, often to the detriment of regular users. If the proponents manipulate transactions, this could create instability in the rollers based on the Ralup. To remedy this, developers work on solutions such as basic -based preconfirations, which aim to add economic incentives to the proponents of acting in the interest of Rollups.
Thus, while the based rollers may have a promising means of reducing the fragmentation between the layers-2, they are not a miracle solution. “My personal opinion is that the rollers based is a part of the solution, they are not the only solution, and not all the stroke-2 should necessarily or will be based,” said Fisch.
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