以太坊區塊鏈的可擴展性問題：未來取決於L2

2015 年 7 月以太坊區塊鏈的出現徹底改變了數位資產的格局，引入了比比特幣更複雜的層。

The advent of the Ethereum blockchain in July 2015 completely revolutionized the landscape of digital assets by introducing a much more sophisticated layer compared to Bitcoin. Over the years, Ethereum has powered thousands of cryptographic protocols thanks to the possibility of implementing smart contract, completely innovating the cryptographic industry. However, 9 years after its debut on the market, this L1 chain continues to deal with its main Achilles’ heel: scalability. In fact, despite Ethereum being a highly interoperable programmable blockchain thanks to its EVM nature, it does not boast a high throughput for transactions. This is a very large limit because it prevents the blockchain from supporting a large amount of traffic, and makes its cost of use unsustainable. Especially in bull market cycles, where the attention to cryptocurrencies is greater, Ethereum often requires enormous fees to execute transactions. As we can see in the following Etherscan chart, the cost of using the chain, commonly referred to as “gas”, has often reached peaks above 200 gwei. We remind you that gwei is the unit of measurement for gas cost: 1 gwei corresponds to 0.000000001 Ether. If we observe this chart closely, we notice how in the last two years the situation regarding gas price on Ethereum has slightly adjusted. The strong expansion of the L2 chain has indeed helped the main layer to distribute the traffic over more blockspace, limiting queues and high fees. Especially from 2023 onwards, the growth of new second-layer networks has allowed for an overall increase in the scalability of the cryptographic ecosystem, while simultaneously consuming less gas. The settlement requests on Ethereum’s L1 grew exponentially in the middle of the second year, when the L2 trend reached incredible levels. According to the Coingecko ranking, there are currently 46 different L2 solutions, for a TVL of 40 billion dollars. A lot of attention for the Ethereum L2 sector is channeled towards those networks of the Zk-EVM type, which implement the so-called “zero-knowledge proofs”. Although this is actually a rather dated topic, it has only become popular in the blockchain space in recent years. Today, most of the L2 developed on Ethereum are rollup (optimistic or zk) that shift the burden of data processing off-chain by sending verification batches to the L1. Given the success of this cryptographic technology, Vitalik Buterin himself thought a few months ago to make Ethereum a Zk-EVM chain. In fact, with an update, it could make this “built-in” feature, allowing the integration of ZK-SNARKs computational proofs also at the execution level. This would make the main network much more scalable than it is at the moment, capable among other things of validating transactions with maximum focus on privacy.

2015 年 7 月以太坊區塊鏈的出現徹底改變了數位資產的格局，引入了比比特幣更複雜的層。多年來，由於實現智慧合約的可能性，以太坊已經為數千種加密協議提供了支持，徹底革新了加密產業。然而，在上市 9 年後，這條 L1 鏈仍然面臨著其主要的致命弱點：可擴展性。事實上，儘管以太坊由於其 EVM 性質而成為高度可互通的可編程區塊鏈，但它並不擁有高交易吞吐量。這是一個非常大的限制，因為它阻止區塊鏈支援大量流量，並使其使用成本無法持續。尤其是在牛市週期中，對加密貨幣的關注度更高，以太坊往往需要巨額費用來執行交易。正如我們在下面的 Etherscan 圖表中看到的，使用該鏈（通常稱為“gas”）的成本常常達到 200 gwei 以上的峰值。我們提醒您，gwei 是 Gas 成本的計量單位：1 gwei 對應 0.000000001 以太幣。如果我們仔細觀察這張圖表，我們會注意到過去兩年以太坊上的 Gas 價格情況略有調整。 L2鏈的強勁擴展確實幫助主層將流量分配到更多的區塊空間，限制了隊列和高額費用。特別是從 2023 年開始，新的第二層網路的成長使得加密生態系統的可擴展性全面提高，同時消耗更少的 Gas。以太坊 L1 的結算請求在第二年中期呈指數級增長，此時 L2 趨勢達到了令人難以置信的水平。根據 Coingecko 排名，目前有 46 種不同的 L2 解決方案，TVL 為 400 億美元。以太坊 L2 領域的大量注意力都集中在 Zk-EVM 類型的網路上，這些網路實現了所謂的「零知識證明」。儘管這實際上是一個相當過時的話題，但它只是近年來在區塊鏈領域才開始流行。如今，大多數在以太坊上開發的 L2 都是 rollup（樂觀或 zk），透過向 L1 發送驗證批次來轉移鏈下資料處理的負擔。鑑於這項加密技術的成功，Vitalik Buterin 本人在幾個月前就考慮將以太坊打造成一條 Zk-EVM 鏈。事實上，透過更新，它可以實現此「內建」功能，從而允許在執行層級整合 ZK-SNARK 計算證明。這將使主網路比目前更具可擴展性，能夠在最大程度地關注隱私的情況下驗證交易。

? – Enshrined zk-EVMhttps://t.co/jKohatBnq6

? – 載入 zk-EVM https://t.co/jKohatBnq6

The idea of Vitalik, as brilliant and ambitious as it is, involves very complex structural changes. For example, a change to the rule being proposed would require the addition of a pre-state root and a post-state root to each block entering the consensus layer.

維塔利克的想法雖然輝煌而雄心勃勃，但涉及非常複雜的結構變化。例如，對所提議的規則的變更將需要為進入共識層的每個區塊添加前狀態根和後狀態根。

This means that each block gets a special type of cryptographic proof that shows that the transactions in the block are valid and therefore correctly updates the state of the blockchain. 

這意味著每個區塊都會獲得一種特殊類型的加密證明，該證明表明區塊中的交易是有效的，因此可以正確更新區塊鏈的狀態。

Another solution would require the separation of different parts of the execution blocks, introducing the calculation via GPU to validate the ZK-SNARKS proofs.

另一種解決方案需要分離執行區塊的不同部分，透過 GPU 引入計算來驗證 ZK-SNARKS 證明。

This would make Ethereum a “hybrid” chain where the consensus remains on PoS and the execution of cryptographic proofs is powered by PoW.

這將使以太坊成為一條「混合」鏈，其中共識仍然基於 PoS，而加密證明的執行則由 PoW 提供支援。

Overall, all these possible implementations require significant trade-offs to the Ethereum blockchain.

總的來說，所有這些可能的實現都需要對以太坊區塊鏈進行重大權衡。

At the moment, no decision has been made yet: the challenge of the coming years will be focused on making the chain more scalable, while keeping the code structure lean. For now, the presence of L2 solves a substantial part of the scalability of the Ethereum blockchain, making a ZK-EVM update on L1 not strictly necessary. The large quantity of second-layer networks seems to be sufficient at the moment to meet all the blockspace requests made by the community. That said, in the future it will be necessary to improve the level of throughput, but for now L2 seems like an excellent compromise to avoid complicating Ethereum’s code too much. The only problem that absolutely needs to be remedied concerns the fragmentation of liquidity on the various L2s, which often act as single agents. Many rollups operate in fact in isolation without interoperability, making it complex to transfer funds from one chain to another without going through the main layer. For example, the ZK Stack chains are interoperable only with other ZK Stack chains. Then, even within a single ecosystem, the technological implementations, wallet integrations, and user interfaces are still in a very early stage. Approximately 40 billion dollars, according to data from L2 Beat, are

目前，尚未做出任何決定：未來幾年的挑戰將集中在使鏈更具可擴展性，同時保持程式碼結構精簡。目前，L2 的存在解決了以太坊區塊鏈可擴展性的很大一部分問題，使得 L1 上的 ZK-EVM 更新並不是絕對必要的。目前，大量的第二層網路似乎足以滿足社群提出的所有區塊空間請求。也就是說，未來有必要提高吞吐量水平，但目前 L2 似乎是一個很好的折衷方案，可以避免以太坊程式碼過於複雜。唯一需要解決的問題是各種 L2 上的流動性分散，這些 L2 通常充當單一代理。許多匯總實際上是孤立運行的，沒有互通性，這使得在不通過主層的情況下將資金從一個鏈轉移到另一個鏈變得複雜。例如，ZK Stack 鏈只能與其他 ZK Stack 鏈互通。然後，即使在單一生態系統內，技術實現、錢包整合和使用者介面仍處於非常早期的階段。根據 L2 Beat 的數據，大約 400 億美元