- Polygon’s chief had initially called L3s an “Ethereum security risk.”
- Buterin claimed there were “lighter” options for L3s.
The conversation about the necessity of Ethereum [ETH] L3s has not cooled down. Now Vitalik Buterin has expressed his opinion on the L3 discussion, increasing the number of opponents of the three-tier architecture.
For perspective, the discussion arose after Degen Chain, an L3 on Base, posted explosive growth less than a week after its debut.
Polygon [MATIC] CEO Marc Boiron described L3s as a “Ethereum security risk‘ and underlined how they could devalue ETH.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin added his views on the discussion: to report that there are “lighter” alternatives to L3s.
“There are other, potentially ‘lighter’ ways to achieve the same cost savings as L3s.”
Opposition to Ethereum L3s
Buterin’s position on L3s has not changed. In 2017, he expressed his reservations over a three-tier architecture with the same scaling scheme.
“A three-tier scaling architecture that consists of stacking the same scaling scheme on top of each other generally does not work well.”
Nevertheless, Buterin acknowledged that L3s “can reduce some of the fixed costs of batch publications and deposits/withdrawals.” Unfortunately, they do not improve transaction throughput.
Instead, Buterin advocated “lighter” cryptographic tools known as SNARKs (Succinct, Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge).
He believed that SNARKs could efficiently tackle whatever L3s were trying to solve.
Cem Ozer of Sovereign Labs had the same sentiments, to emphasize,
“The complex hierarchy (three-layer architecture) is completely unnecessary.”
Similarly, Sreeram Kannan, founder of Eigen Layer, echoed Ozer and Buterin’s inclination. He noted that L2s can communicate with each other without the need for L3s.
“Do we need L3s? Direct L2-to-L2 interaction can occur in many ways.”
The above discussion shows too much warmth for L3s. It remains to be seen whether L3s will survive the attack.