With the Dencun upgrade of the Ethereum mainnet approaching, there has been an increasing discussion within the community regarding Layer2 scalability. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has stated that in order to qualify as L2, it must have stronger security attributes than just multi-signature.
Yesterday, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko announced on Twitter that the Ethereum Goerli testnet has completed the Dencun upgrade, bringing us one step closer to the mainnet upgrade. The introduction of the EIP-4844 improvement proposal in the Dencun upgrade directly addresses Ethereum Layer2 scalability, sparking discussions on Rollups, modularization, data availability layers, and more.
In recent discussions, members of the Scroll team, a Layer2 scaling solution for Ethereum, claimed on Twitter that although Rollups and Validiums do not share the same security guarantees, they can both be considered as Ethereum’s L2. This viewpoint prompted a response from Vitalik Buterin, who stated that for a platform or technology to qualify as L2, it must possess stronger security attributes than just multi-signature, even if these security attributes are not as comprehensive as Rollups. He also mentioned Validiums again, stating that they meet this standard. As for Optimiums, Vitalik believes they might also meet the standard but require more rigorous analysis to determine their exact security efficiency.
It is understood that Validium has a lower cost and higher throughput compared to Rollup technology. This is mainly because Rollups publish transaction data to Ethereum, incurring higher costs and limiting throughput, while Validium offers ZK (zero-knowledge) security guarantees without publishing transaction data to Ethereum, storing it off-chain, thus further reducing costs.
With the imminent Dencun upgrade, Vitalik’s statements about various L2 solutions have garnered attention. In another tweet yesterday, he mentioned that the core of Rollups is unconditional security guarantees, allowing users to safely withdraw their assets even if others collude. However, if the data availability layer relies on external systems, it cannot fully protect user assets, and in that case, the network should belong to Validium. Validium sacrifices decentralization but can utilize a decentralized data availability layer to ensure the system operates normally, thereby increasing network integrity.
It is worth noting that although the current Ethereum roadmap primarily focuses on Rollups rather than Validium, Vitalik’s recent statements indicate that he is not opposed to Validium. On the contrary, he points out that for many blockchain applications, Validium is the correct choice as it improves security by adopting a well-distributed data availability layer system.
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