In this article I will put my main learnings derived from conversations and attending several talks by Skylar Weaver -Devcon Operations Lead of the Ethereum Foundation- who has specialized in telling how Ethereum will scale without shortcuts. The goal is always to tell how it will be done in a rigorous and simple way.
The first thing to recognize is that Ethereum was a victim of its own success, the lack of scalability represented in high gas costs has been a headache. It is understandable that this bothers users, especially in Latin America where thinking of paying these “commissions” valued in dollars is a great effort, to say the least.
However, there are reasons to understand why the road is long and taking shortcuts is expensive. Without a doubt, the first cost is in terms of decentralization. An easy way to achieve path cutting is to increase the size of the blocks and reduce the execution time. In this approach, we talk about full nodes, not those of staking (where staking is done).
The reason for having these easy-to-run validation nodes for average users has three attributes. First, it increases resistance to censorship as it will not be easy to co-hash many nodes at once. The higher the density of diverse nodes, the less capacity for a massive attack. Second, more privacy because it will be possible to connect to your own nodes and not use added infrastructure services such as Infura. Third, and perhaps the most important, protect against changes in the protocol by very powerful nodes that concentrate too much power.
For a long time there has been talk of the expected change to Eth2, but this has led to many misunderstandings that lead to impatience. The proposal is a semantic change, forget about Eth2, Layer 1 will continue to be Ethereum and there will only be one. Vitalik Buterin proposed a nomenclature change. There are a series of independent updates, most of them done in parallel: the merge, the verge, the purge, anyway; many that require a separate article.
Okay for now, we already saw that change in the way we refer to processes. But what is happening then with Layer 2? Another term that is repeated a lot, let’s imagine that Layer 1 is a city under construction, whose public transport system collapsed and is rebuilding its infrastructure with an underground metro. Without a doubt, this affects mobility in the short term, so many families decide to go to nearby places to continue their lives and from time to time they go to the city to register certain activities. Those nearby places are Layer 2, spaces with the same design that make Rollups of their activities and store them in Layer 1.
However, some may wonder and Polygon or xDai, what are they? Well, in the view of experts, these parallel chains are like cities that are copied from the same public transport system of the Ethereum City, they increase the size of the roads and the travel time. But, they have a big problem and that is that this habit of saving the data in Layer 1 is not generated. By making these copies, the security and decentralization of Ethereum is sacrificed.
In conclusion, the path that is being taken is long. But as they say, all good things take time. The important thing is that users can run their own nodes, that is, build their houses in the Ethereum City to enjoy the security of this space. If the transactions are too expensive, they can be moved to the suburbs, but not to a replica town that took shortcuts in its urban development.
The final message is that making a copy of the design of a city is not the same as living in it. The Ethereum ecosystem is working every day, adhering to its fundamental principles. A better public transportation system that is comfortable and safe will be created, meanwhile other ways of transportation are being innovated.
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Juan David Reyes is a community developer in Latam for Status Network. He previously served as React UI Developer at Belatrix Software and as Director of Information Technology at TASAR Real Estate Valuations. He was also co-founder of Subasta.la
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