ETHKL24 | Hubert Kotlinski, BD & Marketing at L2BEAT | A Very Quick Overview of L2s

[Music] okay uh hi nice to meet you everybody so I'm Hubert I am from the l2b team so the team that is building el2 be.com a website where you can basically get all of the data that you need about every single L2 out there and easily compare them uh on the like metrics like tvl activity security decentralization and so on so on so without further Ado uh I would like to basically talk a bit about these l2s that everybody seems to talk now nowadays everybody wants to launch their own L2 uh for like one reason or another so what exactly are l2s so as you know probably the transactions on ethereum cost a lot uh when there is a huge spike in activity and we are not yet capable of SC sculling it on L1 itself so what we came up with is to basically build layer tws so this is like a tech the lay TOS are Technical Solutions aim to scale the base layer in a trust minimized way what does it usually mean is that there is like a second blockchain that is somehow connected to the L1 itself so like for example it posts the state uh of all of the addresses and their balances at let's say at the end of the day or or whatever on ethereum so when it goes down in theory you should be able to uh um you should be able to basically rebuild the the H to uh using only ethereum that basically like shutting down ethereum is really really hard uh so that's how for example rollups work there are like so there are like light l2s as well that have like more trust uh assumptions but like l2b strongly advises uh like basically focuses on the rollups uh so right now we have like around 80 uh active layer two projects so like a lot uh like three years ago it was like only a couple uh and there is like almost 100 upcoming ones so as you can see this is like basically the very hot topic right now uh so there is no official to by the ethereum team uh we are all extending the ethereum ecosystem together so there are like like a lot of teams like from every single country across the world and they are building they have all the different focuses so some of them are building alternative VMS to not just use evm some of them are l1s that now are migrating to L2 to get more users liquidity deps uh like there are like some new approaches like based rollups that use the ethereum uh nodes themselves to process the transaction uh there are like l2s by big leading exchanges like coinbase uh soon by others like like Kraken for example uh and there are like for example l2s by zerion or or W coin that are basically like uh part of the the of their of their wallet so like basically all of the transactions in the wallet happens on on their own l2s uh so there are like optim there are a couple of categories of l2s there are optimums so basically they use fraud proofs and offchain data uh so basically what that is means that it means is that um uh you you still have like this 7day uh waiting period uh for the proofs because you know BR proofs uh those are the same F Pro are in like for example optimistic rollups but the data uh the state of the L2 itself is hosted somewhere else not on ethereum so this like this is like basically uh making you TR you need to trust the team behind the L2 a bit more H because if they will be gone the the state will be gone probably as well so the most known Optimus right now is mantle by bybit exchange Manta one of the sponsors of the conference uh matis uh for example and Gravity by G set then we have validium so basically the ones that are using validity proofs and they do the same stuff with the uh with the state as as optimium and those are mostly right now starx exchanges so pretty old technology uh like Apex um and polygon cdk and ZK Stacks uh projects with custom da Solutions uh so for example Asar or Kronos uh that use uh those Stacks but at the same time post the data to to Celestia uh another group is optimistic rollups so basically you are uh able to uh withdraw permissionless uh using only ethereum from them knowing the state on the L1 uh but you have this 7-Day waiting period uh if you want to to to uh do this withdraw most known optimistic rollups are of course optimis and arbitrum but also we consider all of the like ZK rollups that are not have the ZK part ready yet as optimistic ones so this is like for example Tao and zirut and the last one that is called an end game uh by many people uh in like the L2 space are ZK rollups so basically you combine the validity proof with on onchain data uh and you are like basically when you post the state you are validating every block uh which is like a bit more expensive but most like a lot more secure uh and allows you to withdraw in like like for example in case of ZK sync in 21 hours instead of waiting like the whole hold the week like the end game is to basically be able to withdraw in a matter of seconds so the most know ZK rollups right now is scroll uh zking Stark net and lar by consensus okay so as I said like we are mostly focused on rollups because we believe they are like the most Trust minimize Solutions out there uh we have uh two types of them as I already mentioned ZK rollups and optimistic rollups ZK rollups uh are like a pessimistic rollups so we are validating every single block that is uh that the data is posted on L1 uh and optimistic rollups uh we basically don't verify if the state that they are posting is correct uh every single time we just leave like the uh uh like a special uh time window to basically have like everybody be able to uh challenge the uh the state and say that for example something posted on L1 is actually not true so optimistic rollups are actually uh leading the market right now so arbit room itself has like 40% of the whole market share then we have uh a different approach by optimism that started like uh allowing others building with their Tech uh from the very uh young period of its uh existence so right now top three op Stacks actually account to like 30% of the whole market so the same as arbitrum actually uh and basically that's thanks to base of course right so nl2 solution uh by the coinbase team uh the tvl is probably uh a bit outdated because if is a bit down right now but still it's like Prett they secure pretty considerable amount of money and then we have ZK rollups so ZK rollups uh hold only like around 11% of the whole Market uh right now so that's as you can see this is a lot less so I think there's for sure uh Room to Grow here but the question is will they actually like will those ZK rollups actually grow or will the optimistic rollups transition using the tech like Sint and others uh to become like ZK by themselves and they will basically like retain their current Community uh so why should I launch my own rollup is to basically one simple answer H get the sequencer fees so like you need to pay for every single transaction that happens on chain and usually with those systems you are retaining around 90% uh of all of those uh fees uh while you need to pay like 10% to uh save the state somewhere either on ethereum or or any other da um yeah and why choose like ethereum for eurap in particular uh it's because like in my honest opinion um the ethereum is the most secure blockchain right now than thanks to its proof of stake like basically its security uh is just a lot harder to to crack and it's also its security system is a a lot more sustainable compared to for example stuff like proof of work by by Bitcoin so like deploying a rollup was pretty hard back in the day so like when l2b started three years ago there was only couple of teams teams working on them but right now after so many years you basically have like a lot of uh out of the box Stacks that you can use so like arbitrum orbit op stack Stark net polygon cdk ZK sync elastic chain um and for like basically deploying them you don't need to do it by yourself anymore but there are also like companies that are like basically focus on doing only that so the like for example Caldera can do it old layer uh you can just come to them and they will like basically take care of everything for you but you you still can do it by by yourself of course if you want so like the new next wave of L2 is is coming and it will be much bigger than all the previous ones so the first uh wave where the first iterations of general purpose L2 so arbitrum op and so on uh now everybody can Fork one uh one of the L2 Stacks or use the a mentioned uh rollup as a service providers uh and soon we'll have like a lot of new cool approaches with those alternative VMS base rollups like Tao eyes or puffer uh privacy Focus l2s like Aztec or Alf zero and a lot of up chains like you know like Zora Z an active one right now so but like there will be like many many others just basically you will have a chain with only one app on it so like there are a couple of problems for them so number one is of course liquidity so you either need to have a shared liquidity uh that like for example polygon aay Z casing elastic chain wants to do so one contract that holds all of of the of the asset for all of the all of those l2s at the same time you can use like stuff like layer zero or hyper lane or a warhole that basically uh introduces some more trust assumptions to your tokens unfortunately yeah but you can like very easily Bridge it across different chains or maybe somebody will soon build something uh much cooler as a public good we'll see so the the problem number two uh is developers so there are like not that many uh evm Developers uh out there so by Electric Capital developer report we can see this is like around uh like like not not even 3,000 uh but at the same time there's like a lot of those deaths actually move to to the l2s themselves and those new those new on like for example fuel Stark net uh movement Eclipse that uses svm or Aztec they all have their own different Al VMS and they are basically H getting the deaths from like other places they don't want to cannibalize the devs that we already have for for evm and that way they can basically do a lot more cool things uh with their Tech yeah so like the main cost for those Solutions is basically to pay to store the data uh as I mentioned somewhere so you like right like maybe a year ago it was still a problem now it's super easy because we got like in a like in the span of couple of months we got Celestia uh and blobs and then of course aail launch and a DA for example launch so there's like a lot of a lot uh to choose from uh you need to pay for the infra but like if you will choose roll up as a service provider you just pay a monthly monthly fee to them uh so like around around like couple thousand dollars and they will run the infa for you for you by by basically their team and of course you need to uh like kind of incentivize uh building on your chain so you need to do some grants program uh which is like probably a lot harder to execute than like people actually think uh so you have stuff like Optimus retr pgf arbitrum stip are good examples but if you will incentivize everything nothing is incentivized anymore this is kind of a paradox that is also like a problem to all of those teams because many teams are actually farming those those GRS and not staying uh on the Chain uh for the long run yeah so as you can see we have so many choices and the question arouses which Tech should we actually use as users and developers so there there in theory there should be a neutral Grant where all of this all of this knowledge is gathered in a single easy to understand uh way and this is basically lb.com so like this is the two of our most known Frameworks for for the risks and the centralization of those L2 Solutions so risks are showing you the five ways how can you lose your money so for example uh exit window tells you that uh if they want to do a milous upgrade how much time do you have to escape with your funds and stages show you how decentralized those Solutions really are so like stage zero is completely centralized chain and stage two is like fully immutable immutable chain uh yeah so like if everybody wants to visit the the website I will leave the QR code for a couple of seconds if you'll go there you'll basically see all of the Frameworks that I already mentioned and all of the projects as well and you are able to get all of the data about them like TV Layel activity finality Liv basically the data that you will not find anywhere else and also we spend a lot of time to make sure that this data is very high quality in it's not like random another random dashboard around here we actually write articles papers and we talk with all of the researchers from EF even vital himself and that's how we actually know how to how to count that stuff in the correct way uh so this is basically uh our risk roset the most important framework in my my opinion so basically there is sequencer failure State validation da and exit window and proposer failure and as a users I would strongly advise you to actually learn a bit more before you will jump into the another new fresh L2 to get an airdrop we don't have time to go through all of them but basically for example for da uh we are making sure that the we are basically checking everything by ourselves and we are making sure that the L2 ensures that there is like all information needed to check the system is accessible to to everyone right or this like after mentioned exit window so basically making sure you have time to escape after the malicious upgrade so should everyone launch their own l two so like there were like cases already by PGN for example when they have like a lot of problems uh and they actually had to shut shut down the network and people were unable to withdraw the money so like the question is if you will build it it's so easy if you are actually able to retain the the users to get like those fees to actually get the chain going for a bit longer than like two weeks so what future holds so we are in the very bu transition phase we are scaling like crazy there are there is new L2 every single day uh but we don't fill all of these block space so for example blobs are ethereum uh are still waiting for Price Discovery in my opinion uh interoperability is leaving the infant stage so basically all of those systems like layer zero warholm and hyperlane only recently got a lot of traction um and also like all of these cross uh stack um liquidity is Al also just starting so for example for uh ZK sync elastic chain you only have two projects casing era and Kronos right now so not a lot but hopefully it will be more uh soon yeah so thank you very much uh I hope I was not too quick because I only had uh 15 minutes but if you have like any more questions about the l2s or how that exactly Works be sure to catch me uh I will be running around here uh in in the conference for another couple of hours at least so thank you thank you very much thank you Hubert if you want to catch Hubert later he's also a judge on the hackaton going on next door so we'll be announcing the results of that at uh 400 p.m. I believe so