以太坊区块链的可扩展性问题：未来取决于L2

2015 年 7 月以太坊区块链的出现彻底改变了数字资产的格局，引入了比比特币更复杂的层。

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 月以太坊区块链的出现彻底改变了数字资产的格局，引入了比比特币更复杂的层。多年来，由于实现智能合约的可能性，以太坊已经为数千种加密协议提供了支持，彻底革新了加密行业。然而，在上市 9 年后，这条 L1 链仍然面临着其主要的致命弱点：可扩展性。事实上，尽管以太坊由于其 EVM 性质而成为高度可互操作的可编程区块链，但它并不拥有高交易吞吐量。这是一个非常大的限制，因为它阻止区块链支持大量流量，并使其使用成本不可持续。尤其是在牛市周期中，对加密货币的关注度更高，以太坊往往需要巨额费用来执行交易。正如我们在下面的 Etherscan 图表中看到的，使用该链（通常称为“gas”）的成本常常达到 200 gwei 以上的峰值。我们提醒您，gwei 是 Gas 成本的计量单位：1 gwei 对应 0.000000001 以太币。如果我们仔细观察这张图表，我们会注意到过去两年以太坊上的 Gas 价格情况略有调整。 L2链的强劲扩展确实帮助主层将流量分配到更多的区块空间，限制了队列和高额费用。特别是从 2023 年开始，新的第二层网络的增长使得加密生态系统的可扩展性全面提高，同时消耗更少的 Gas。以太坊 L1 的结算请求在第二年中期呈指数级增长，此时 L2 趋势达到了令人难以置信的水平。根据 Coingecko 排名，目前有 46 种不同的 L2 解决方案，TVL 为 400 亿美元。以太坊 L2 领域的大量注意力都集中在 Zk-EVM 类型的网络上，这些网络实现了所谓的“零知识证明”。尽管这实际上是一个相当过时的话题，但它只是近年来在区块链领域才开始流行。如今，大多数在以太坊上开发的 L2 都是 rollup（乐观或 zk），通过向 L1 发送验证批次来转移链下数据处理的负担。鉴于这项加密技术的成功，Vitalik Buterin 本人在几个月前就考虑将以太坊打造成一条 Zk-EVM 链。事实上，通过更新，它可以实现此“内置”功能，从而允许在执行级别集成 ZK-SNARK 计算证明。这将使主网络比目前更具可扩展性，能够在最大程度地关注隐私的情况下验证交易。

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

? – 载入 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.

维塔利克的想法虽然辉煌而雄心勃勃，但涉及非常复杂的结构变化。例如，对所提议的规则的更改将需要为进入共识层的每个块添加前状态根和后状态根。

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. 

这意味着每个块都会获得一种特殊类型的加密证明，该证明表明块中的交易是有效的，因此可以正确更新区块链的状态。

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

另一种解决方案需要分离执行块的不同部分，通过 GPU 引入计算来验证 ZK-SNARKS 证明。

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

这将使以太坊成为一条“混合”链，其中共识仍然基于 PoS，而加密证明的执行则由 PoW 提供支持。

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

总的来说，所有这些可能的实现都需要对以太坊区块链进行重大权衡。

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，尚未做出任何决定：未来几年的挑战将集中在使链更具可扩展性，同时保持代码结构精简。目前，L2 的存在解决了以太坊区块链可扩展性的很大一部分问题，使得 L1 上的 ZK-EVM 更新并不是绝对必要的。目前，大量的第二层网络似乎足以满足社区提出的所有区块空间请求。也就是说，未来有必要提高吞吐量水平，但目前 L2 似乎是一个很好的折衷方案，可以避免以太坊代码过于复杂。唯一需要解决的问题是各种 L2 上的流动性分散，这些 L2 通常充当单一代理。许多汇总实际上是孤立运行的，没有互操作性，这使得在不通过主层的情况下将资金从一个链转移到另一个链变得复杂。例如，ZK Stack 链只能与其他 ZK Stack 链互操作。然后，即使在单一生态系统内，技术实现、钱包集成和用户界面仍处于非常早期的阶段。根据 L2 Beat 的数据，大约 400 亿美元