Recently, @drakefjustin's statement 'The golden age of Solana is over' sparked heated discussions in the market. Previously, Ethereum's strategic focus was on a Rollup-centric grand strategy, and the performance of layer2 would directly affect Ethereum. Now, the new direction of BeamChain is about to be finalized. In my view, Ethereum's optimization of its main chain requires a focus on achieving L1+L2 synchronous enhancement, particularly: 1）zkVM; 2）layer2 interoperability;
1）zkVMs
Justin stated that the Ethereum Foundation will gradually invest tens of millions of dollars into zkVM projects, including zkRISC-V, Poseidon cryptographic analysis, L2beat for zkVMs, etc. This will undoubtedly bring a significant boost to the market sentiment for projects working on zkVMs. Whether the golden age of Layer2 can arrive is uncertain, but hopefully, zkVMs can usher in a silver age first. Why is the Ethereum Foundation supporting zkVMs? I have analyzed this in the article below:
1）Ethereum's next focus, including Verge, Purge, etc., will revolve around achieving underlying SNARKs through Ethereum;
2）The BeamChain proposed by Ethereum is also aimed at enhancing the consensus layer with a VM execution environment after vehicles are integrated with SNARKs;
3）The VM execution layer will be customizable and pluggable, and excellent VMs of layer2 or other zkVMs may be mentioned at the level of Ethereum's mainnet execution layer;
Overall, the implementation of SNARKs in the mainnet will completely revamp the system, making zkVMs an inevitable choice for Ethereum to enhance its L1 mainnet.
Therefore, it is foreseeable that excellent upstream ZK virtual machine solutions in the direction of zkVMs will receive attention, including: @RiscZero team’s zkVM built on RISC-V and @ProjectZKM's zkVM based on the zkMIPs microprocessing instruction architecture, among others. In addition, some layer2 solutions that have good performance optimization in off-chain execution environments may also be elevated, potentially becoming mainnet-level execution layers one day, such as @Starknet, a hardcore tech team that consistently brings special surprises in the ZK field; @zksync, whose airdrop was 'hard to explain', but its product strength and engineering capabilities in the zk direction are commendable;
2）layer2 interoperability
Justin mentioned that the sellers of Solana are essentially Ethereum's layer2, and I agree with this viewpoint. In previous comparisons between ETH and SOL, the article clearly expressed that Ethereum is undoubtedly a top-tier public chain in terms of ecological richness, application scalability, and technical stability, which cannot be doubted.
Currently, Ethereum's layer2 grand strategy is facing a lack of application scenarios and excessive infrastructure homogeneity, reflected in: 1）Applications in scenarios such as DeFi and MEME, which have been successfully validated in the past, are fermenting and landing on Ethereum at a relatively slow pace, with public chains like Solana and Sui capturing portions of the market under the premise of being more suitable for MEME dissemination and DeFi participation; 2）The prevalence of Rollup As A Service and OP Stack, ZK Stacklayer3 large business expansion strategies has led to severe infrastructure homogeneity in Ethereum's layer2. Although 'one-click chain creation' has lowered the construction costs of chains, it has also resulted in excessive infrastructure homogeneity, significantly segmenting the expected market for layer2 and dragging down overall expectations for the grand prospects of layer2, which could even threaten market confidence in Ethereum L1. How to break the deadlock? Recently, in a series of articles during the Devcon conference, @VitalikButerin highlighted that the solution lies in layer2 interoperability.
The excessive homogeneity of layer2 has caused a split in liquidity and also fails to meet the differentiated configuration needs in certain application scenarios. The strategic optimization direction of 'interoperability' will enhance both of these shortcomings simultaneously. On one hand, to unify liquidity, various layer2 will actively conform to the mainnet for data structure optimization and improvements, leveraging the advantages of the mainnet Helios light client and promoting the standardization of cross-message chain advancements to enhance their interoperability capabilities; on the other hand, once the trading operability capabilities are enhanced, differentiated specialty applications will become competitive advantages of the chain (focusing on categories such as gaming, trading, MEME, etc., rather than being an omnipotent chain), thus each layer2 will intensify efforts to create differentiated flagship applications.
