[PART 2] The Ethereum Layer-2 Wars (Here’s Where Things Stand Right Now)
TL;DR
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Because it at the moment stands, transferring ETH to an L2 nonetheless requires a big preliminary payment — and if/once you wish to switch between L2’s, it might take as much as 7 days.
Full Story
To know how the conflict of the Ethereum layer-2’s will shake out, we first want to grasp the connection Ethereum at the moment has with its customers…
If it have been a dialog, it’d go one thing like this:
Person: I’ve some Ethereum on a self custody pockets and was desirous to ship it over to a layer-2 (L2) community to avoid wasting on charges and…
Ethereum: Say no extra — that’s sensible of you! That’ll be $50 in switch charges.
Person: Wait, I assumed these charges have been being waived?
Ethereum: They’re when you’ve ‘bridged’ (transferred) your ETH to an L2 — however don’t fear, when you bridge from a centralized trade (like say Coinbase), it’s dust low cost!!
Person: Okay, cool, let’s transfer half my ETH to the trade and do the ‘bridge.’
Ethereum: Good! That can be $50.
Person: God dammit – so $50 regardless, huh? I’ll simply put on that payment as soon as → get to an L2 → and be carried out with mainnet transaction charges.
Ethereum: Amen! Proper, so do you wish to bridge to Optimism? Polygon? Arbitrum? Loopring? Base? Perhaps, Starknet?
Person: I don’t know…I imply, I needed to gather a Podcast NFT on pods.media?
Ethereum: Good! They use Optimism. Bridging now.
Person: Okay, cool. What if the subsequent platform I wish to discover doesn’t use Optimism? If I want switch to a unique L2 — it’ll nonetheless be low cost, proper?
Ethereum: Completely it is going to! Although…it is going to take anyplace between 20 minutes and seven days for the switch to finish.
Person: My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
Excellent news is: these are simply the rising pains of the world’s second largest cryptocurrency!
They’re set to go in due time.
Find out how, in Half 3…
