Gnosis co-founders delivered a speech on "On the Limitations of Layer 2", discussing issues such as L2 technology limitations and neutrality

Martin Köppelmann, co-founder of Ethereum infrastructure company Gnosis, shared on social media an in-depth discussion of "The Limits of L2" at the Ethereum Denver Conference ETH Denver, discussing technical limitations, neutrality issues, challenges brought about by the lack of L1 rigidity, the security of local assets, and proposed solutions for "Inter-Ethereum Protocols."

Among them, Martin pointed out that in the long run, even if it is perfectly implemented, L2 will still have some fundamental problems: 1. L2 is only suitable for applications whose state will not expand, such as exchanges (only transaction results are needed, not transaction history), but for applications with expanded state, there is no way to expand the capacity; 2. In terms of transaction costs, the peak gas fee of L2 sometimes exceeds $1. Even if EIP4844 is implemented (gas can be reduced by 90%), it is still not applicable to scenarios where gas needs to be less than 1 cent (sbu-cent). In addition, as demand increases, gas will still increase; 3. L2 has problems with asset exit. If the exit cost exceeds the value of the user's assets on L2, users with small assets may not be able to pay the exit gas fee. Even if all users can afford it, they will be stuck due to bandwidth limitations; 4. Some applications cannot be rolled up. For example, the state of CirclesUBI and POAP is too large to be exported to L1. It is impossible to compress this data and put it on L1, so L2 is useless to them.

He also added that L2’s sequencer is very centralized and may face or even be forced to KYC (only accept transactions from KYC addresses). The reason why L2 is secure is based on L1. L1 itself is still under development and will undergo many modifications in the next 5 to 10 years, which will bring many challenges to L2.

In addition, Martin proposed an interesting solution, similar to the IBC model of Cosmos, which can create another chain that runs the same thing as Ethereum, and then connect through the trustless ZK-bridge to form an Ethereumverse. (Planet Daily)