Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron expressed his dissatisfaction with the Layer 3 (L3) network, stating that its presence is taking away the value of Ethereum.
His statement comes amid growing excitement about L3 networks such as Degen Chain, which build on top of L2 to facilitate application-specific dApps, offering solutions such as scaling, cost, and interoperability. .
Impact of L3 network on Ethereum value
Polygon’s CEO is X, who writes that Polygon Labs, Ethereum’s Layer 2 scaling network, is not involved in Layer 3 as it is not needed to scale the existing network.
Additionally, he expressed concern that the L3 network could undermine Ethereum’s security and overall value. Therefore, if all his L3s settle on his one L2, Ethereum will have no value and there will be a risk to security.
However, Boisron’s views were met with opposition. One commenter claimed that Ethereum’s Layer 2 is “the ARE value of Ethereum,” which Boisron partially agreed with, but argued that the value of L2 is not equivalent to the value of Ethereum.
Boiron revealed that Polygon Labs allows developers to build L3 on a variety of platforms, including the Polygon network. Additionally, we are focused on scaling Ethereum while ensuring fair value distribution between Polygon and Ethereum. He reiterated Polygon’s mission to extend Ethereum by leveraging EVM’s parallelization and privacy priorities, and argued that L3 is not aligned with this purpose.
Perspectives from Helus Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz in a March 31 post: lined up Boiron characterizes L3 as essentially a centralized server, settling on another centralized server (L2) controlled by multisig.
Debate over Layer 3 solutions heats up
Meanwhile, Peter Haymond, Senior Partnerships Manager at Offchain Labs, said: challenged Boiron’s perspective pointed out several advantages of L3 that do not undermine the value of Ethereum. These benefits include the cost-effectiveness of native bridging from L2 rather than L1, the affordability of on-chain proofs, the use of custom gas tokens, and specialized state transition capabilities.
Patrick McCauley, a researcher at the Arbitrum Foundation, expressed surprise at Boisron’s view, noting that L3 has significant advantages, especially by allowing L2 to evolve into a payment layer, thereby reducing the cost of running bridges. , said it could rely on Ethereum as the final arbiter of global order services and payments.
Discussion around L3 first started in late 2022 when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that these chains would serve a different purpose than scaling and provide specialized functionality. Ta. He emphasized that a third layer on the blockchain is only justified if it introduces unique functionality not provided by the second layer.
In particular, the current leaders within the L3 ecosystem are Orbs, zkSync Hyperchains, Xai, and the recently launched Degen Chain. Only four of his current L3 tokens are listed on CoinGecko, showing that the sector is still small.