The recent rise of the L3 project, Degen Chain, seems to have sparked speculation about the possibility of L3’s extensive development. However, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin pointed out that L3 cannot magically increase throughput.
(
Degen Chain’s trading volume exceeded 100 million within a week of its launch, and the native token Degen surged more than fifty times.
)
Table of Contents
Toggle
L3 will not magically increase throughput
Controversy sparked by L3 hype
Vitalik quotes and updates his previous article on L3 from a year and a half ago
“What kind of layer 3s make sense?”
, the conclusion is that although L3 can reduce some fixed costs for deposits and withdrawals, it cannot magically increase throughput.
Advertisement – Continue reading below
However, Vitalik pointed out that there are still lighter upgrade approaches that can achieve similar cost savings as L3. In his article, he mentioned three L3 models and advocated for L2 to be responsible for scalability while L3 focuses on customizing application functions. Although this does not directly increase scalability, it allows L3 applications to scale through L2 while meeting specific operational requirements for different applications.
Vitalik believes that the debate about the definition of L3 is not important. What matters are the technical questions about “which structures are actually most meaningful.” Currently, due to the uncertain ecosystem of L2, most discussions can only stay in the theoretical stage.
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 expected to be implemented, and L3 may start playing a bigger role.
Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs, recently stated that Layer3 will only capture value for Layer2 and will not be beneficial for Ethereum’s development. He emphasized that Polygon will not develop L3, expressing its loyalty to Ethereum.
He also pointed out that if all Layer3s are built on a specific Layer2, then Ethereum will basically not gain any value and will instead face security risks. This seems to be a criticism aimed at the recent rise of Degen Chain.
(
Polygon will not develop Layer3, CEO: Protecting Ethereum’s security
)
Degen Chain
Vitalik Buterin
Further Reading
Degen Chain’s trading volume exceeded 100 million within a week of its launch, and the native token Degen surged more than fifty times.
Vitalik’s evaluation of meme coins chaos: Respecting meme coin hype while hoping to witness higher quality projects.