Polygon’s CEO Marc Boiron emphatically said that the layer-2 community was not contemplating growing layer-3 protocols due to the potential dangers they pose to Ethereum’s safety.
Boiron made this assertion on the again of the early success of Degen Chain, a layer-3 community operating on the Coinbase-backed scaling answer Base.
Layer 3 protocols improve scalability by constructing upon Layer 2 infrastructure, permitting builders to tailor application-specific blockchains to their necessities.
Degen Chain
Degen Chain is a layer-3 community constructed utilizing Arbitrum Orbit for the DEGEN token. The digital asset has swiftly emerged as the first neighborhood token amongst Farcaster customers, the quickly increasing web3 social media platform.
Since its launch on March 28, the community has captured substantial consideration and transactional exercise throughout the crypto business, witnessing a powerful surge of over 200% previously week.
Out there knowledge signifies that the community has facilitated the bridging of greater than $30 million, alongside powering over 3.5 million transactions as of March 30.
Group debates layer-3
Degen Chain’s early successes have attracted debates from the crypto neighborhood, who maintain differing views concerning the community.
In a March 31 publish on X (previously Twitter), Boiron asserted that layer-3 networks divert worth from Ethereum onto the layer-2 platforms internet hosting them.
In accordance with him, such a trajectory doesn’t align with Polygon’s dedication to Ethereum’s scaling, which the corporate already addresses by way of its proof-of-stake (PoS) and zero-knowledge Ethereum Digital Machine (zkEVM) chains.
Moreover, Boiron identified the potential adversarial results of layer-3 adoption, highlighting their minimal efficiency enhancements and the looming menace to Ethereum’s safety. He stated:
“If all L3s settled to 1 L2, then Ethereum would seize principally no worth and, thus, Ethereum safety could be in danger.”
He added:
“If Ethereum earns no charges and has no prospect of incomes charges aside from a tiny quantity of charges from this one L2, then the worth of ETH will drop and, when it’s clear that it’ll proceed to drop as a result of there isn’t a financial future for it, validators will not be keen to carry ETH and, thus, not be keen to safe the community.”
In the meantime, blockchain knowledgeable Cygaar defined that layer-2 networks are usually not but “matured” and have but to inherit Ethereum’s safety degree due to present challenges like community centralization, upgradeable bridge contracts, and growing proving techniques.
Consequently, he argued that integrating layer-3 networks atop layer-2s may exacerbate dangers and compromise the safety of those blockchain networks.
