This article discusses the possibility of viewing Solana as an Ethereum 'L2', but the lack of social commitment may lead to different forking rules, potentially causing confusion between 'Solana L1' and 'Solana L2'.
Author: @jon_charb
Translation: Plain Language Blockchain
This article is a brief summary of the L1/L2 debate and the question of whether 'Solana can become L2', especially for those wisely choosing to ignore thousands of replies:
Toly explains that you can make Solana (or any other chain) an 'L2' of Ethereum (or another chain) by publishing the ledger data of Solana on Ethereum and deploying a bridging contract that verifies the state of Solana. This is very similar to all the 'L2s' we are familiar with today, where users can still enjoy security properties like enforced withdrawals back to Ethereum.
The difference between this hypothetical Solana design and current L2s (like Base) is whether there is a 'social commitment to restore when confirmed blocks on Ethereum are rolled back and to hard fork when Ethereum hard forks'. This is what Vitalik discussed in his old post about different types of L2.
For example:
Base has social commitment, which will restore/fork during Ethereum rollbacks/hard forks.
In the hypothetical Solana design, I only deploy this bridge from Solana to Ethereum, without social commitment from Solana to fork with Ethereum. Nodes by default do not follow Ethereum, nor is there an embedding of this bridge.
Therefore, you can have most Solana nodes adopt different forking rules than the bridge (e.g., nodes are upgrading while the bridge is unaware, or enforced withdrawals trigger a fork). Ideally, these chains are the same thing (i.e., the bridge and the other nodes reach consensus). In the case of a fork, you might have 'Solana L2' (everything recognized by the Ethereum bridge) and 'Solana L1', while Solana's social consensus continues to follow.
In this scenario and in typical L2s like Base, regardless of how social commitment is set up during the setup phase, social consensus can always fork according to what they consider to be the 'true chain'.
For instance, if the Ethereum bridge to Solana becomes very important, then in practice, Solana's social consensus might ultimately always choose to follow it. Hence, 'Solana L1' and 'Solana L2' may never diverge.
In contrast, Base or other traditional L2s may have social commitment to follow their Ethereum bridge, but in some unforeseen circumstances, nodes may decide to deviate from the bridge (whether due to a massive hack making the bridge immutable, or an entity requesting them to deviate from the will of token holders, or any other reason).
So to summarize, yes, you can turn Solana into 'L2', and the differences that everyone is debating essentially boil down to the default social commitment at the start, but this is not binding.
Some people also argue that having multiple confirmation/forking rules coexist in a hypothetical scenario (e.g., the bridge has one forking rule while validators have another) means that even if they reach consensus on the current chain, it effectively indicates the existence of two chains (e.g., Solana L1 and Solana L2). In a sense, this may be technically accurate but also confusing, as we all see and use the same chain.
Article link: https://www.hellobtc.com/kp/du/11/5508.html
Source: https://x.com/jon_charb/status/1851817726932930579
