What the Ethereum Merger Means for Layer 2 Blockchain Solutions
Experts share their views on the impact of the merger on Ethereum scalability solutions in the form of blockchains layer 2.
Analysis
Ethereum is just over a week away from officially moving to a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, with the merger set to complete September 13-15. With the transition, Ethereum would abandon its current proof-of-work (PoW) chain, eliminating miners from the ecosystem.
Ethereum is a large ecosystem with thousands of decentralized applications and decentralized financial protocols running on it. Additionally, there are several layer 2 solutions, i.e. solutions built on top of the blockchain itself, layer 1, to facilitate faster transactions and make Ethereum more scalable.
>The merger would mark the completion of the second phase of the three-phase transition process. The upcoming event will only see the official consensus change, where the Ethereum blockchain would start processing transactions on the PoS chain. However, there won't be much impact on scalability or gas charges.
The scalability patches are supposed to come after the completion of the third phase, which would introduce sharding, a form of parallel processing that Ethereum founders and developers believe would increase Ethereum's transaction throughput exponentially.
Will Layer 2 solutions such as Polygon, Arbitrum One, Boba Network and Loopering be viable after the merger? Cointelegraph reached out to industry insiders to find out how these L2 ecosystems will be impacted by the merger.
Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino believes the merger will have no impact on L2s, as the merger will not immediately solve scalability solutions. He told Cointelegraph that even after the third phase of the Ethereum transition is complete, when it becomes monumentally scalable, L2s will still find a place in the ecosystem. He explained:
“It will be business as usual for L2s. These solutions still have key value for short, medium and long-term scalability. L2s will still be needed to meet the growing demand and use of blockchains across the globe. Even 100,000 transactions per second wouldn't be enough to meet real world demand and adoption."
Experts share their views on the impact of the merger on Ethereum scalability solutions in the form of blockchains layer 2.
Analysis
Ethereum is just over a week away from officially moving to a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, with the merger set to complete September 13-15. With the transition, Ethereum would abandon its current proof-of-work (PoW) chain, eliminating miners from the ecosystem.
Ethereum is a large ecosystem with thousands of decentralized applications and decentralized financial protocols running on it. Additionally, there are several layer 2 solutions, i.e. solutions built on top of the blockchain itself, layer 1, to facilitate faster transactions and make Ethereum more scalable.
>The merger would mark the completion of the second phase of the three-phase transition process. The upcoming event will only see the official consensus change, where the Ethereum blockchain would start processing transactions on the PoS chain. However, there won't be much impact on scalability or gas charges.
The scalability patches are supposed to come after the completion of the third phase, which would introduce sharding, a form of parallel processing that Ethereum founders and developers believe would increase Ethereum's transaction throughput exponentially.
Will Layer 2 solutions such as Polygon, Arbitrum One, Boba Network and Loopering be viable after the merger? Cointelegraph reached out to industry insiders to find out how these L2 ecosystems will be impacted by the merger.
Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino believes the merger will have no impact on L2s, as the merger will not immediately solve scalability solutions. He told Cointelegraph that even after the third phase of the Ethereum transition is complete, when it becomes monumentally scalable, L2s will still find a place in the ecosystem. He explained:
“It will be business as usual for L2s. These solutions still have key value for short, medium and long-term scalability. L2s will still be needed to meet the growing demand and use of blockchains across the globe. Even 100,000 transactions per second wouldn't be enough to meet real world demand and adoption."
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