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This is a good article. With Optimism, Ethereum actually looks like a complete, usable solution that can scale. That said there is a lot of complexity around b

This is a good article. With Optimism, Ethereum actually looks like a complete, usable solution that can scale. That said there is a lot of complexity around bridging which leads to high transaction fees, long waiting times (e.g. some projects have a 7+ days waiting time for bridging tokens back from L2 to Ethereum mainnet). Another downside to Ethereum is that it forces all this legacy on everyone... As many L2s and other ERC20 tokens will be abandoned in 20+ years, much of their data will still be stored on Ethereum mainnet blockchain. Smart contacts are more like accounts, they aren't like old transactions, you can't just prune them after some time without major ramifications. With old transactions in single-token blockchains, you can potentially prune old transactions while keeping account data and balances the same. The trust and centralization implications of doing this are minimal and constrained to that single blockchain only. With Ethereum, Ethereum community can't just decide to prune old unused smart contracts from the mainchain since it would affect the integrity of L2s and it's noth Ethereum's place to decide whether or not they can delete tokens that belong to other communities. Overall, Ethereum ecosystem has a legacy problem due to the fact that they are multi-token. L2s accumulate unnecessary legacy from Ethereum and also from other L2s. IMO, the benefits of decoupling tokens from Blockchain infrastructure aren't worth it as the value of a token is ultimately derived entirely from its infrastructure/integrations.

b112 2y ago
Compute power marches on, including bandwidth, i/o, and storage space/speed. If it increases faster than blockchain size, then we're OK.
- ur-whale 2y ago
  > If it increases faster than blockchain size, then we're OK. Hope is not a strategy, and things should actually be the other way round: to avoid centralization, blockchain projects should be designed to scale at the same rate available compute power does externally: b/w, storage, etc.
  - tossandthrow 2y ago
    It absolutely is. Everything around you banks on an ever expanding economy and continuing inflation. Housing, pensions, etc. Saying that this is not a strategy is just plain wrong.
- lttlrck 2y ago
  So long as we can pump oil out of the ground faster than we use, we're ok. A surprising number of things are "OK" if we ignore externalities.
  - b112 2y ago
    This is flawed reasoning. I mentioned nothing about oil, you are bizarrely trying to attribute a techinal response, to an anti-environment response. You fo realize ethereum isn't bitcoin, yes? Regardless, it sounds as if you're against more efficient, power saving computing? (Hands down, compute power is incredibly power efficient, compared to 20 years ago. This trend does, and will continue.) If you have issues with ethereum, which is one of the most friendly power consumption cryptos which exists, don't blame people citing techical facts.
- jongjong 2y ago
  It doesn't solve the centralization issue though since it becomes increasingly difficult to run a full 'archive node' over time. I suspect it would take months to sync a full node from scratch today. That barrier is too high to be called decentralized. You end up having to restore from snapshots and that involves trust.
Hendrikto 2y ago
> some projects have a 7+ days waiting time for bridging tokens back from L2 to Ethereum mainnet Optimistic rollups have to have such a waiting period by design. If you want to avoid it, use ZK rollup L2s.
treyd 2y ago
> e.g. some projects have a 7+ days waiting time for bridging tokens back from L2 to Ethereum mainnet End users will rarely use this process, instead they're directed to swap pools which essentially do an atomic swap of the same asset on both sides of the pool. The counterparty can observe the batches submitted by the sequencer are legitimate and can act on their side of the swap and collect a fee for providing liquidity.
- xur17 2y ago
  Matcha has a good example of what this UX can look like. For example, I recently used it to swap sDAI on Ethereum for USDC on Arbitrum (a layer 2). It's wrapped in a single transaction that does the swap + the bridge with the best exchange rate (after taking fees into account). Taking it a step further, in the future I imagine we will see wallets that abstract the concept of chains away, and automatically move the asset to the chain with the platform you are trying to interact with as part of the interaction transaction.
  - treyd 2y ago
    > abstract the concept of chains away, and automatically move the asset to the chain with the platform you are trying to interact with I started to write an article [1] a while ago about how wallets ought to go about this but it seems the ecosystem insists on doubling down on developer tooling that really bakes in the concept of "which chain the user is on" into how all the libraries are used. It doesn't have to be this way but it'd require a bit of work to really get to the world where chains are very abstracted, and I'd like to see someone work towards it. [1] https://tr3y.io/articles/crypto/towards-better-wallets.html https://tr3y.io/articles/crypto/towards-better-wallets.html

b112 2y ago

Compute power marches on, including bandwidth, i/o, and storage space/speed. If it increases faster than blockchain size, then we're OK.

ur-whale 2y ago
> If it increases faster than blockchain size, then we're OK. Hope is not a strategy, and things should actually be the other way round: to avoid centralization, blockchain projects should be designed to scale at the same rate available compute power does externally: b/w, storage, etc.
- tossandthrow 2y ago
  It absolutely is. Everything around you banks on an ever expanding economy and continuing inflation. Housing, pensions, etc. Saying that this is not a strategy is just plain wrong.
lttlrck 2y ago
So long as we can pump oil out of the ground faster than we use, we're ok. A surprising number of things are "OK" if we ignore externalities.
- b112 2y ago
  This is flawed reasoning. I mentioned nothing about oil, you are bizarrely trying to attribute a techinal response, to an anti-environment response. You fo realize ethereum isn't bitcoin, yes? Regardless, it sounds as if you're against more efficient, power saving computing? (Hands down, compute power is incredibly power efficient, compared to 20 years ago. This trend does, and will continue.) If you have issues with ethereum, which is one of the most friendly power consumption cryptos which exists, don't blame people citing techical facts.
jongjong 2y ago
It doesn't solve the centralization issue though since it becomes increasingly difficult to run a full 'archive node' over time. I suspect it would take months to sync a full node from scratch today. That barrier is too high to be called decentralized. You end up having to restore from snapshots and that involves trust.

Hendrikto 2y ago

> some projects have a 7+ days waiting time for bridging tokens back from L2 to Ethereum mainnet Optimistic rollups have to have such a waiting period by design. If you want to avoid it, use ZK rollup L2s.

treyd 2y ago

> e.g. some projects have a 7+ days waiting time for bridging tokens back from L2 to Ethereum mainnet End users will rarely use this process, instead they're directed to swap pools which essentially do an atomic swap of the same asset on both sides of the pool. The counterparty can observe the batches submitted by the sequencer are legitimate and can act on their side of the swap and collect a fee for providing liquidity.

xur17 2y ago
Matcha has a good example of what this UX can look like. For example, I recently used it to swap sDAI on Ethereum for USDC on Arbitrum (a layer 2). It's wrapped in a single transaction that does the swap + the bridge with the best exchange rate (after taking fees into account). Taking it a step further, in the future I imagine we will see wallets that abstract the concept of chains away, and automatically move the asset to the chain with the platform you are trying to interact with as part of the interaction transaction.
- treyd 2y ago
  > abstract the concept of chains away, and automatically move the asset to the chain with the platform you are trying to interact with I started to write an article [1] a while ago about how wallets ought to go about this but it seems the ecosystem insists on doubling down on developer tooling that really bakes in the concept of "which chain the user is on" into how all the libraries are used. It doesn't have to be this way but it'd require a bit of work to really get to the world where chains are very abstracted, and I'd like to see someone work towards it. [1] https://tr3y.io/articles/crypto/towards-better-wallets.html https://tr3y.io/articles/crypto/towards-better-wallets.html