Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron believes that the extreme rivalry between Ethereum layer-2 networks is the “largest downside” dealing with the second-largest digital asset by market capitalization.
In an April 7 publish on social media platform X, Boiron emphasised how the competitors between these networks has led to Ethereum cannibalizing itself constantly. He defined:
“Ethereum’s largest downside is cannibalizing itself constantly by way of all L2s competing over devs, customers and liquidity fairly than competing exterior of the Ethereum ecosystem. Microeconomics 101 would let you know it is a dangerous technique. I don’t have the reply but it surely must be addressed.”
A number of crypto neighborhood members share Boiron’s perspective, asserting that Layer 2 networks ought to goal these exterior the Ethereum ecosystem. Karthik Senthil, the enterprise accomplice at crypto hedge fund Lattice, stated:
“L2s solely develop into profitable in the event that they meaningfully develop the pie and appeal to the 99% of stuff (web2 included) that’s exterior Ethereum at this time. If we struggle over the identical individuals which are already right here, nobody is profitable something.”
Notably, Boiron reposted a social media publish that urged the layer-2 networks to play the long-term sport and “champion one another wins.” The publish reads:
“As fragmentation and chain abstraction will quickly be solved, L2s ought to reshape their views on the worth of siphoning apps from one L2 to the opposite. Quickly a profitable utility on x-L2 will present a proportion uplift in worth to y-L2 . Stealing purposes is a cannibalization of that worth.”
In the meantime, some neighborhood members argued that the competitors amongst layer-2s may in the end improve Ethereum’s ecosystem.
Layer-2s recognition
Layer-2s are blockchain networks designed to reinforce Ethereum’s scalability. Over the previous years, they’ve gained vital recognition and adoption inside the crypto ecosystem.
Knowledge from L2Beat reveals that the networks cumulatively course of 123 transactions per second, surpassing Ethereum’s mainchain by an element of 10.7. For context, Coinbase’s high-flying Base community and Arbitrum, the biggest layer2 blockchain, recorded greater transactions per second than Ethereum mainnet up to now day.
Moreover, originally of this month, the variety of lively wallets using the networks surpassed 5 million. On the similar time, the whole worth of belongings locked on these platforms has exceeded $42 billion, and there are indications that the pattern may proceed.