The blockchain is a revolutionary expertise in some ways and one which guarantees groundbreaking advantages for a number of industries, however that may solely occur if it’s in a position to overcome probably the most urgent downside affecting it proper now.
Anybody who repeatedly reads up on the newest crypto information will probably pay attention to the so-called “scalability” downside in blockchain. The problem is that blockchains battle to course of transactions quick sufficient. Bitcoin customers can attest to that solely too effectively, with the average transaction sometimes taking round 10 minutes, although at busy instances it may be wherever from half-hour to 1 hour to course of. If we’re to see mass adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the present transaction snail tempo merely is not going to do.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined the problem of accelerating transaction speeds when he spoke concerning the “blockchain trilemma”, which defines the perfect blockchain as one which’s decentralized, safe and scalable.
Reaching that supreme has up to now confirmed to be unattainable to any blockchain. The problem is that in case your blockchain can solely ever have two of the three traits, on the expense of the third.
Within the case of Bitcoin as an illustration, now we have a lot of nodes that guarantee it’s each decentralized and extremely safe. Bitcoin has a thriving group in consequence and it has by no means been hacked (and virtually actually by no means shall be!). However these traits come on the expense of scalability. As a result of there’s such a lot of nodes within the Bitcoin community, every one in every of them has to validate every transaction. As a rule, the result’s gridlock, as most of the nodes battle with poor connectivity and can’t sustain with the tempo of transactions being made by Bitcoin customers.
If we lower the variety of nodes in Bitcoin’s community, it might certainly have the ability to course of transactions quicker, however it might come at the price of decrease safety.
Builders have been working across the clock for years attempting to give you an answer to the blockchain trilemma and the excellent news is that they’re making progress. A wide range of concepts and methods have been carried out at many alternative ranges on a number of blockchains, with various ranges of success. A few of these concepts revolve round constructing a second “layer” onto the blockchain to course of transactions via another community. Consequently, now we have seen the emergence of many alternative sorts of Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchain scaling options.
Blockchain Layers Defined
Layers usually confer with the extent at which scaling options are carried out inside the blockchain. Some options are carried out on the blockchain itself, whereas others are merely linked to it and performance independently as a sort of dependent community or protocol.
Therefore, after we speak about blockchain Layer 1s, we’re usually referring to the precise blockchain – the distributed peer-to-peer community – that encompasses all the nodes that comprise the system. So, for instance, the Ethereum cryptocurrency’s Layer 1 community is the Ethereum Community, whereas XRP runs on the XRP Ledger and AVAX sits on the Avalanche Community.
Layer 2 networks are the impartial scaling protocols and methods that sit atop of a kind of Layer 1 blockchains. They are often considered a second layer to the principle blockchain community.
Usually there are two sorts of Layer 2 resolution, particularly nested networks and state channels. Within the former, the blockchain is taken into account because the “mainchain” and units the principles for your complete community of subchains. It usually doesn’t take part within the system’s operation, apart from when there’s a have to resolve a dispute. With this type of system, builders can construct plenty of impartial blockchains that interoperate with one another, every designed for various purposes. The thought is to scale back community congestion by having separate, streamlined chains for every use case.
An excellent instance of that is the Polkadot blockchain, which really is a “Layer 0 platform that ties collectively numerous parachains right into a single, big community. The entire parachains in Polkadot’s ecosystem, such because the Web3 privateness protocol Manta Network, are literally Layer 1 blockchains in their very own proper, nevertheless they get the advantages of Polkadot’s consensus community and safety. One other benefit of this method is that all the parachains are interoperable with each other. So Manta Community, which masks crypto pockets addresses and transaction quantities utilizing cryptography, can carry its privateness options to purposes constructed on Polkadot’s essential chain and all of its parachains too.
In future, Manta may also have the ability to entry different blockchains because of its new partnership with Axelar, which has developed a cross-chain bridge to networks equivalent to Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche and Terra.
As for state channels, these are protocols that facilitate two-way communication between the off-chain transaction community, and the principle blockchain. So when an software builds on such a protocol, all transactions will happen off of the principle blockchain. The secret’s that these off-chain transactions don’t require node verification, which means they are often processed a lot quicker to ease congestion.
Blockchain Layers In Motion
To raised perceive how Layer 1 and Layer 2 differ, we are able to take a look at some examples. Probably the most well-known Layer 1 of all is, after all, Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s scaling issues are well-known, and a lot of Layer 2 options have emerged to attempt to enhance issues. Probably the most well-known is the Lightning Network, which depends on good contracts to course of transactions off-chain between completely different wallets. The community establishes these cost channels between pairs of wallets to facilitate transactions virtually instantaneously.
The best way it really works is kind of intelligent, as a result of it doesn’t have to create pairs between each pockets. For instance if Pockets A has a longtime channel to Pockets B, and Pockets B with Pockets C, then Pockets A can switch funds to Pockets C with out making a separate channel. A pockets can shut its cost channel at any time, and solely then will all the transactions that went via its channel be recorded onto the principle blockchain. This enables your complete community to maneuver a lot quicker.
The second-most well-known Layer 1 blockchain is Ethereum, and it too has given beginning to a number of Layer 2s. Maybe one of the best recognized is Ethereum’s Polygon. Polygon is a quicker parallel blockchain that runs alongside the Ethereum Community. To reap the benefits of Polygon, customers should bridge a few of their tokens to it, from the place they’ll work together with a number of “Layer 3” decentralized purposes which have additionally bridged to Polygon.
In the meantime, the Cardano blockchain’s greatest DeFi software AdaSwap has constructed itself atop of one other Layer 2 resolution known as Hydra. AdaSwap is constructing an ecosystem for Cardano that encompasses an automatic market maker-based decentralized alternate, a launchpad, a local NFT market and high-yield liquidity swimming pools known as Stake and Neglect. It can enable Cardano customers to purchase and promote NFTs, launch tasks, stake tokens and earn curiosity.
AdaSwap is definitely a “Layer 3”, or decentralized app. dApps, as they’re recognized, can sit on both Layer 1 or Layer 2. Within the case of AdaSwap. It’s constructing on a Layer 2.
The issue with constructing on Cardano (Layer 1) is that its blockchain structure is far nearer to Bitcoin’s than Ethereum’s, and in consequence it turns into a lot tougher to put in writing purposes that reside instantly on the Cardano chain. Due to this, AdaSwap and its DEX and different companies all sit on the Hydra Layer 2 protocol, which can enable it to bundle and course of transactions off of the principle Cardano community.
Probably the most intriguing scaling options that’s being explored by the Tezos blockchain is a Layer 2 mechanism referred to as “optimistic rollups”, that it plans to implement alongside its newly up to date Tenderbake consensus mechanism.
Whereas Tenderbake improves latency and finality to supply quicker transactions and smoother-running decentralized apps, it doesn’t considerably alter its throughput, or the variety of transactions that may be processed per second.
To beat this, Nomadic Labs just lately proposed using optimistic rollups, that are entities that sit on the principle blockchain with their very own pockets tackle that may compactly course of off-chain transaction executions and state updates. The thought is that transactions despatched to a rollup are left unprocessed by the principle chain nodes, as a substitute being processed by specialist rollup operators. The operators course of transactions off-chain earlier than posting a receipt again to the principle chain to summarize the rollup’s new state as a cryptographic hash. In essence, the system repeatedly “rolls up” transactions off-chain, liberating up the community from congestion.
It’s necessary to not get confused by the completely different layers. Some blockchains, equivalent to Stacks, may be fairly muddling. Stacks is commonly incorrectly described as a Layer 2 resolution for Bitcoin, when it is in fact a Layer 1 platform in its personal proper. The confusion arises as a result of Stacks is linked to Bitcoin by its consensus mechanism, which spans each the Bitcoin and Stacks blockchains, known as Proof of Switch. This permits Stacks to profit from Bitcoin’s safety, whereas Stacks apps can use Bitcoin’s state, regardless of being hosted on a separate blockchain. So whereas Lightning Community is designed to assist Bitcoin scale, Stacks was constructed to carry new use instances to Bitcoin by way of good contracts.
The Upshot
Though the crypto layers look fairly muddled to an outsider, the actual fact is that they’re proof the group is working arduous to handle the largest challenge in blockchain, that of scale. Because the demand for crypto will increase, blockchain networks will come underneath elevated strain to search out options to scaling.
Layer 1 options have a significant position as a result of they’re the muse of our decentralized blockchains. However they want Layer 2. With a bit of luck, some enhancements and refinements, evidently Layer 2s will finally have the ability to tackle Layer 1’s congestion points, permitting us to lastly embrace the blockchain trilemma of decentralization, safety and scalability.
