Adopting Layer 2 - The Daily Gwei #72
Layer 2 tech is here - it’s just not evenly distributed.
I’ve written about layer 2 scaling on Ethereum before (here, here and here) where I’ve discussed that layer 2 scaling is already here and production ready but the adoption is still lacking because we don’t have the most-used and most popular apps on Ethereum using it yet. Well, I believe that’s going to change rapidly over the next few months - starting with Gitcoin.
Source: https://twitter.com/owocki/status/1304115526164033536
So as you can see above, Gitcoin will be using a layer 2 scaling technology called zkSync as part of the next grants matching round on the platform. This is huge because Gitcoin is one of the most used and loved non-DeFi apps on Ethereum but unfortunately suffered greatly from the high gas fees during the last matching round. With zkSync, these costs come down considerably and it will expose a plethora of new users to this scaling technology.
After zkSync, they plan to use Loopring’s zkRollup technology which is already powering the Loopring decentralized exchange. What Gitcoin is doing here is acting as an adoption and marketing vehicle for layer 2 technologies in a bid to both improve user experience/engagement on Gitcoin during matching rounds and to push other projects to adopt these technologies. If this pays off like we hope it will then I believe it’ll be seen as a “turning point” for layer 2 on Ethereum.
Besides Gitcoin, plenty of other Ethereum-based projects have signaled that they will be adopting some flavor of layer 2 in the coming months which is an overall positive sign as well. Personally I think that the most interesting thing that can happen for layer 2 will be when Uniswap deploys their implementation for a few reasons:
Uniswap is the most used app on Ethereum (by far) so it’ll be a great case study
If done right, it’ll show others projects the power of layer 2 which should speed up adoption
Whatever layer 2 technology Uniswap chooses has a high chance of becoming “the standard”
So yes, layer 2 adoption is coming, it’s just going to take a little while longer and an ecosystem-wide effort to actually push it forward. I believe we’ll get there over the coming months (and years) as projects are basically forced to adopt layer 2 tech as soon as possible due to the consistently high gas fees. For now though, I suggest trying out the layer 2 projects that are already live such as Loopring and DeversiFi.
Have a great weekend everyone,
Anthony Sassano
All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.