L3 Controversy Stirs Debate, Ethereum Founder Vitalik: L3 Not the Ultimate Scalability Solution
The recent rise of the L3 project, Degen Chain, seems to have sparked speculation about the possibility of L3’s significant development. However, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin pointed out that L3 cannot magically increase throughput.
L3’s launch on Degen Chain has resulted in a trading volume exceeding 100 million within a week, with the native token Degen surging over fifty times.
However, Vitalik pointed out that there are still lighter upgrade methods that can achieve similar cost savings as L3. In his article from a year and a half ago titled “What kind of layer 3s make sense?”, he concluded that while L3 can reduce some fixed costs of deposits and withdrawals, it cannot magically increase throughput.
Vitalik mentioned three L3 models in the article, advocating for L2 to handle scalability while L3 focuses on customized application functions. Although this does not directly increase scalability, it allows L3 applications to scale through L2 while meeting specific operational requirements of different applications.
Vitalik believes that the debate about the definition of L3 is not important. What matters are the technological issues such as “which structures are actually the most meaningful.” Currently, most discussions remain theoretical due to the uncertain nature of the L2 ecosystem.
He speculates that in the future, as the L2 scaling ecosystem gradually matures, more complex or simpler architectures (such as the one he described in the article) are likely to be implemented, and L3 may then begin to play a greater role.
Marc Boiron, the CEO of Polygon Labs, recently stated that Layer3 only captures value for Layer2 and does not bring any benefits to Ethereum’s development. He emphasized that Polygon will not develop L3, expressing their loyalty to Ethereum.
He also pointed out that if all Layer3s are built on a certain Layer2, Ethereum will basically not gain any value and instead be exposed to security risks. This seems to be a criticism of the recent rise of Degen Chain.
Degen Chain and Vitalik Buterin are mentioned in the article.
