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 totally different objective — offering “personalized performance.”
Buterin shared his ideas in a Saturday publish, providing three “visions” of what layer 3s will likely be used for sooner or later.
The Ethereum co-founder mentioned a 3rd layer on the blockchain is sensible provided that it gives a distinct operate to layer 2s, which have been used primarily to reinforce scaling through zero-knowledge (zk) Rollup know-how:
“A 3-layer scaling structure that consists of stacking the identical scaling scheme on high of itself typically doesn’t work properly. Rollups on high of rollups, the place the 2 layers of rollups use the identical know-how, definitely don’t.”
However, “a three-layer structure the place the second layer and third layer have totally different functions, nevertheless, can work,” mentioned Buterin.
Certainly one of layer 3’s use instances can be what Buterin describes as “personalized performance” — referencing privacy-based purposes which might make the most of zk proofs to submit privacy-preserving transactions to layer 2.
One other use case can be “personalized scaling” for specialised purposes that don’t wish to use the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to do computation.
Buterin additionally mentioned that layer 3 might be used for “weakly-trusted” scaling by Validiums, a zk-proof know-how. Buterin mentioned this can be helpful for “enterprise blockchain” purposes through the use of “a centralized server that runs a validium prover and frequently commits hashes to chain.”
However, Buterin added that it’s nonetheless unclear whether or not layer-3 constructions will likely be extra environment friendly than the present layer-2 mannequin in relation to constructing personalized purposes 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, without having to undergo the costly layer 1,” Buterin mentioned.
However, Buterin mentioned 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 might not essentially enhance the effectivity of the community.
Buterin’s feedback on attainable layer 3 use instances come as StarkWare’s newly produced recursive validity proofs seem to have probably put an finish to Ethereum’s scalability issues.
Declan Fox, the product supervisor at Ethereum software program agency ConsenSys, recently told Cointelegraph that “with recursive rollups and proofs, we theoretically can infinitely scale.”
These recursive proofs have been properly examined in manufacturing, with StarkWare co-founder Eli-Ben Sasson not too long ago 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 might quickly be on the playing cards “with extra engineering and tweaking.”