This topic has been well covered by StarkWare and recently Vitalik has a detailed post about layer 3s. So, do I have anything to add? I always thought I did not, which is why I never wrote on the topic - and it’s been a good ~10 months since I first discussed this topic with the StarkWare folks. But today, I think I might be able ramble about it from a different perspective. The first thing to understand is “web2” runs on 100,000,000 servers around the world. “Web3” is a rather silly meme, gi...

This topic has been well covered by StarkWare and recently Vitalik has a detailed post about layer 3s. So, do I have anything to add? I always thought I did not, which is why I never wrote on the topic - and it’s been a good ~10 months since I first discussed this topic with the StarkWare folks. But today, I think I might be able ramble about it from a different perspective. The first thing to understand is “web2” runs on 100,000,000 servers around the world. “Web3” is a rather silly meme, gi...

A common hopium promoted by crypto people is “we must decentralize everything and put it on a blockchain” which has resulted in bizarre memes like “web3”. In reality, public blockchains are only meant for very specific usecases, when both of these criteria are fulfilled:Peer-to-peer operation: software that can be run by anyone, and messages are passed directly between themStrict global consensus: all peers must agree on exactly the same resultsAs such, blockchain apps are a niche subset of “...

A common hopium promoted by crypto people is “we must decentralize everything and put it on a blockchain” which has resulted in bizarre memes like “web3”. In reality, public blockchains are only meant for very specific usecases, when both of these criteria are fulfilled:Peer-to-peer operation: software that can be run by anyone, and messages are passed directly between themStrict global consensus: all peers must agree on exactly the same resultsAs such, blockchain apps are a niche subset of “...

Oisín Kyne has a pretty great thread about why app-specific rollups are better than app-specific L1s for most usecases. I haven’t written about rollups for months now (outside of fractal scaling) and I haven’t kept up to date with the developments in the space. Also, as always (I know you’re tired of hearing this, but I’ll keep saying it) I have zero experience in software development and I’m just an amateur blogger and shitposter, so everything I say here may be bollocks. But I think this po...

Oisín Kyne has a pretty great thread about why app-specific rollups are better than app-specific L1s for most usecases. I haven’t written about rollups for months now (outside of fractal scaling) and I haven’t kept up to date with the developments in the space. Also, as always (I know you’re tired of hearing this, but I’ll keep saying it) I have zero experience in software development and I’m just an amateur blogger and shitposter, so everything I say here may be bollocks. But I think this po...

Disclaimer: everything here is pure speculative showerthought with many oversimplifications, none of this is to be taken seriously, I only hope there’s some food for thought… The beautiful idea of danksharding is this: only builders - which is an honest-minority assumption anyway - will need to run expensive hardware. Validators, users and everyone else will have very meagre costs while rollups scale to millions of TPS over time. The issue is, this ambitious vision will take time. Depending o...

Disclaimer: everything here is pure speculative showerthought with many oversimplifications, none of this is to be taken seriously, I only hope there’s some food for thought… The beautiful idea of danksharding is this: only builders - which is an honest-minority assumption anyway - will need to run expensive hardware. Validators, users and everyone else will have very meagre costs while rollups scale to millions of TPS over time. The issue is, this ambitious vision will take time. Depending o...

I wrote a bunch of posts & comments on Optimism forums about first steps toward decentralizing and minimum viable decentralization earlier this year, but never posted them here on this blog or on Twitter (Edit: I forgot that I had a Twitter thread about this just 4 days ago lol). Recently, Vitalik wrote about the topic. Basically, what Vitalik calls Stage 1 is what I’m looking for. But here’s my opinion of Stage 1:The rollup is fully open-sourcedThe rollup has established governance (note: no...

I wrote a bunch of posts & comments on Optimism forums about first steps toward decentralizing and minimum viable decentralization earlier this year, but never posted them here on this blog or on Twitter (Edit: I forgot that I had a Twitter thread about this just 4 days ago lol). Recently, Vitalik wrote about the topic. Basically, what Vitalik calls Stage 1 is what I’m looking for. But here’s my opinion of Stage 1:The rollup is fully open-sourcedThe rollup has established governance (note: no...

I have covered this topic ad nauseum, but I haven’t written a blog post summarizing the situation since Q3 2021. So, here’s an attempt at a somewhat concise summary of why rollups (and their disaggregated execution layer cousins like validiums, volitions, AnyTrust etc.) are orders of magnitude superior to monolithic blockchains - a true 1 to 100 innovation. I can write much more, but some of these points will be enough, for now. As always, I take a long-term view.ThroughputConsider this persp...

I have covered this topic ad nauseum, but I haven’t written a blog post summarizing the situation since Q3 2021. So, here’s an attempt at a somewhat concise summary of why rollups (and their disaggregated execution layer cousins like validiums, volitions, AnyTrust etc.) are orders of magnitude superior to monolithic blockchains - a true 1 to 100 innovation. I can write much more, but some of these points will be enough, for now. As always, I take a long-term view.ThroughputConsider this persp...

Sustainability can simply be defined as the protocol remains online, resilient to attacks, and usable under all conditions. Arguably, it also needs to be relevant and keep up with contemporary demands. Different types of projects have different requirements to attain this The most challenging, of course, is L1s with proof-of-stake/work consensus For L1s: Economic: a) subsidies > network-wide operational costs; b) demand for base asset (demand drivers can be multifarious) ≥ subsidies Technical...

Sustainability can simply be defined as the protocol remains online, resilient to attacks, and usable under all conditions. Arguably, it also needs to be relevant and keep up with contemporary demands. Different types of projects have different requirements to attain this The most challenging, of course, is L1s with proof-of-stake/work consensus For L1s: Economic: a) subsidies > network-wide operational costs; b) demand for base asset (demand drivers can be multifarious) ≥ subsidies Technical...

There are many reasons why someone would want to go anonymous, pseudonymous, or both. Perhaps your orthonym (given name) doesn’t match your identity. You share an orthonym name with an infamous person you don’t want to be confused with. It’s a difficult name, hard to pronounce, particularly for people from other cultures, so you find an easier name. You’re a performer and you need a more presentable name. You’re an artist dabbling in an experimental side-gig that you want to differentiate fro...

There are many reasons why someone would want to go anonymous, pseudonymous, or both. Perhaps your orthonym (given name) doesn’t match your identity. You share an orthonym name with an infamous person you don’t want to be confused with. It’s a difficult name, hard to pronounce, particularly for people from other cultures, so you find an easier name. You’re a performer and you need a more presentable name. You’re an artist dabbling in an experimental side-gig that you want to differentiate fro...

At EthCC yesterday, Vitalik joked “should we cancel sharding?” There were no takers. I raise my hand virtually and make the case for why Ethereum should cancel danksharding. The danksharding dream is to enable rollups to achieve global scale while being fully secured by Ethereum. We can do it, yes, but no one asked - should we? Ethereum has higher standards for data sharding, which requires a significantly more complex solution of combining KZG commitments with PBS & crList in a novel P2P lay...

At EthCC yesterday, Vitalik joked “should we cancel sharding?” There were no takers. I raise my hand virtually and make the case for why Ethereum should cancel danksharding. The danksharding dream is to enable rollups to achieve global scale while being fully secured by Ethereum. We can do it, yes, but no one asked - should we? Ethereum has higher standards for data sharding, which requires a significantly more complex solution of combining KZG commitments with PBS & crList in a novel P2P lay...

Previously, I’ve discussed why Ethereum should cancel danksharding (or at least, do it only when it’s robust and battle-tested years down the line): 4844 and Done. Here, I’ll go even further and argue even proto-danksharding (EIP-4844) is too complex and right now we should focus on a forgotten gem: EIP-4488. I’m wildly non-technical and misinformed (OK, I’m not misinformed, just non-technical), but as I understand it from discussions with actually technical people, EIP-4488 is a relatively s...

Previously, I’ve discussed why Ethereum should cancel danksharding (or at least, do it only when it’s robust and battle-tested years down the line): 4844 and Done. Here, I’ll go even further and argue even proto-danksharding (EIP-4844) is too complex and right now we should focus on a forgotten gem: EIP-4488. I’m wildly non-technical and misinformed (OK, I’m not misinformed, just non-technical), but as I understand it from discussions with actually technical people, EIP-4488 is a relatively s...

Preface: Usually, for my blog posts, I just write stream-of-consciousness rambles, and don’t even bother proofreading. This is different - this is the first time I actually put in some effort. Why? To celebrate Mirror launching Writing NFTs on Optimism. I have no idea why anyone would buy NFTs for this post, but if you do: 100% of the proceeds will be directed straight to the Gitcoin multi-sig for public goods funding. I’d love to hear feedback - should I repeat this for my older posts, and f...

Preface: Usually, for my blog posts, I just write stream-of-consciousness rambles, and don’t even bother proofreading. This is different - this is the first time I actually put in some effort. Why? To celebrate Mirror launching Writing NFTs on Optimism. I have no idea why anyone would buy NFTs for this post, but if you do: 100% of the proceeds will be directed straight to the Gitcoin multi-sig for public goods funding. I’d love to hear feedback - should I repeat this for my older posts, and f...

The endgame bottleneck for data layers is going to be historical storage. You can read more about it in detail here. Since then, Vitalik has some comments on the matter:At much higher levels of history storage (eg. 500 TB per year), the risk that some data will be forgotten becomes higher (and additionally, the data availability verification system becomes more strained). This is likely the true limit of sharded blockchain scalability. However, all current proposed parameters are very far fro...

The endgame bottleneck for data layers is going to be historical storage. You can read more about it in detail here. Since then, Vitalik has some comments on the matter:At much higher levels of history storage (eg. 500 TB per year), the risk that some data will be forgotten becomes higher (and additionally, the data availability verification system becomes more strained). This is likely the true limit of sharded blockchain scalability. However, all current proposed parameters are very far fro...