Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shares vision for layer-3 protocols
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 function — offering “custom-made performance.”
Buterin shared his ideas in a Saturday put up, providing three “visions” of what layer 3s can 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 prime of itself usually doesn’t work effectively. Rollups on prime 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 completely different functions, nonetheless, can work,” mentioned Buterin.
Certainly one of layer 3’s use circumstances could 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 could be “custom-made scaling” for specialised functions that don’t wish to use the Ethereum Digital Machine (EVM) to do computation.
Buterin additionally mentioned that layer 3 may very well be used for “weakly-trusted” scaling via Validiums, a zk-proof know-how. Buterin mentioned this can be helpful for “enterprise blockchain” functions by utilizing “a centralized server that runs a validium prover and recurrently commits hashes to chain.”
However, Buterin added that it’s nonetheless unclear whether or not layer-3 buildings can be extra environment friendly than the present layer-2 mannequin in relation to constructing custom-made functions on Ethereum.
Associated: A newbie’s information to understanding the layers of blockchain know-how
“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, with no need to undergo the costly layer 1,” Buterin mentioned.
However, Buterin mentioned that as a result of cross-chain transactions could 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 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 advised Cointelegraph that “with recursive rollups and proofs, we theoretically can infinitely scale.”
These recursive proofs have been effectively 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.”
