Ethereum Layer-2 Teams Welcome Proposal to Overhaul Blockchain

According to the groups responsible for zkSync and Polygon, two prominent layer-2 platforms built upon Ethereum, they find the idea of revamping the $400 billion Ethereum blockchain problematic, as they believe it wouldn’t render their supplementary networks obsolete.

Last week at the biennial Devcon conference held in Bangkok, Thailand, developer Justin Drake proposed a bold plan to redesign Ethereum’s main agreement structure. Known as the “Beam Chain” initiative, this plan includes integrating zero-knowledge cryptography, a method employed by several L2 systems for data compression to speed up and reduce costs of transactions, into Ethereum’s underlying protocol.

Over the past few years, I’ve been part of the Ethereum community, advocating for a roadmap that leans heavily on layer-2 solutions like rollups to address Ethereum’s scaling issues. Among these, zero-knowledge rollups stood out as the preferred technology due to their speed and security advantages over optimistic rollups.

Prior to Drake’s speech at Devcon, there was much speculation about how the Beam Chain might impact zero-knowledge rollups on Ethereum, with some questioning if these rollups could eventually become irrelevant.

Alex Gluchowski, CEO of Matter Labs (the creators of zkSync), clarified, ‘What Justin announced doesn’t challenge the core functioning of the execution layer.’ The changes being made are primarily focused on the consensus layer, so they won’t impact the execution layer.

In simpler terms, Ethereum, which serves as the foundational block, consists of multiple layers. The Consensus Layer takes care of verifying blocks, while the Execution Layer manages processing transactions. Essentially, Layer-2s (additional networks built on Ethereum) are primarily impacted by modifications made to the Execution Layer.

Beyond adopting ZK technology, Drake’s proposal aims to reduce block confirmation times, potentially lowering transaction costs for L2s interacting with Ethereum. Additionally, Drake proposes the adoption of single-slot finality, allowing blocks containing transaction data to be considered final and permanent immediately upon creation. If everything proceeds as planned, the Beam Chain is expected to launch in 2029; however, it’s worth noting that Ethereum has a history of postponing complex technical updates.

Gluchowski stated that all those aspects are wonderful since we rely on Ethereum as the worldwide platform for financial transactions.

Glow-Up for Rollups?

Brendan Farmer, one of the founders at Polygon, shared with CoinDesk that he believes the Beam Chain won’t render layer-2 solutions obsolete. Rather, he stated that the upgrade aims to “enhance the performance” of rollup systems.

Farmer stated that shorter confirmation periods, quicker finalization, and the zero-knowledge verifiability of transactions on the consensus layer contribute significantly to ease-of-use and cross-ecosystem compatibility in Layer 2,” he explained.

Accelerating the confirmation process in Ethereum could prove particularly beneficial, as it facilitates seamless interaction between layer-2 solutions, a common ambition in network scalability efforts.

“A big problem with Ethereum right now is that for a block to be considered finalized, it generally takes 12 to 19 minutes,” Farmer said. “If you’re moving funds between like Arbitrum and Polygon: until that transaction has been withdrawn from Arbitrum and deposited to Polygon, Polygon can’t safely credit those funds to a user until that transaction has been finalized on the L1. So that just leads to a bad user-experience, whereas if you have 12-second finality, that becomes a better user experience.”

According to Gluchowski from Matter Labs, the Beam Chain serves as validation that zero-knowledge proofs can effectively scale as a methodology.

“Using ZK really emphasizes the fact that ZK is the end game,” he said.