This is the original 1489th issue of the vernacular partial chain
Author | Five Fireball Leaders
Production｜Vernacular Blockchain (ID: hellobtc)
Looking back on the past, I sometimes sympathize with the investors in 2017, but sometimes I envy them. The sympathy was because the blockchain at that time was barren. Except for Bitcoin, everyone didn’t know what the blockchain could do. Even Ethereum was only used as a mu-funded tool.
At that time, the performance of Ethereum was poor, but even if the performance was good, no one knew what it could do, and did not know what else could be bought. A group of people with money can’t see the way out, like throwing money around in a night, some of them got rich a hundred times, and some of them lost money in a scam.
The winners and losers are dumbfounded. Those projects that have been brought hundreds of times thousands of times, most of them have been swept into the garbage dump of history when I look back today. It is unclear whether the big bosses who became rich in those years were vision or luck. The reason for envy is that the blockchain at that time was simple. There was no fork in Bitcoin. The only public chain could be Ethereum. There was no cross-chain, no Defi, no NFT, no meta-universe, and Various Kinds of Fi…
You don’t need to go to Telegram or Discord every day to track the progress of many projects, be familiar with the different technical characteristics of each chain, learn the endless innovations of Defi, watch the updates of the public accounts in each circle, and read the comments on the big V Weibo or Twitter. , And the possible wealth code.
At that time, apart from professional traders, there was no difference between full-time and part-time in the circle, because there was only so much information. In the blockchain after 2020, the information density exploded exponentially, and full-time and part-time have brought a huge information gap, which in turn may lead to a huge investment return gap.
Aside from Defi, NFT, and games, even the current multi-chain universe infrastructure ecology is enough to make a novice who has just come into contact with the blockchain “sigh.” After all, each Layer1/Layer2 (hereinafter referred to as L1/L2) is a “country” with its own community culture, technical characteristics, and development route.
In this article, we will summarize the characteristics and latest developments of the current mainstream public chains, hoping to help the “newcomers” who have not been in contact with the circle or the “elderly” with a weak technical foundation.
01 Bitcoin
You may be curious why it is Bitcoin, shouldn’t it be Ethereum in the first place? This might be the case if it was written some time ago, after all, Bitcoin “has no ecology.” As a “digital gold”, immobility is the best state.
However, Taproot may change this situation. Although Bitcoin does not have smart contracts, scripts can also implement basic multi-signature, time lock, and conditional programming functions.
This Taproot upgrade will bring a very big improvement to Bitcoin in terms of efficiency and privacy. It will provide many possibilities for other chains to access Bitcoin in the form of “sidechains” in the future, plus the recent Lightning Network Development, we have a chance to see a “different Bitcoin” in the next 1–2 years.
02 Ethereum
Ethereum is the undisputed king of public chains and the core meeting point of the current multi-chain universe. No matter how arrogant and arrogant other chains are, they must be connected to the “wormhole” and Ethereum through various bridges.
What’s more, other chains are fighting on their own. Ethereum can also “grow nine sons”, such as Optimism, Arbitrum, Zk-Sync, Starkware, Matic…The real competitors of each chain in the future are more of these L2s. Not Ethereum itself.
Regarding the recent Ethereum, there are a few things to know:
1. Recently, deflation has been continuous for several days due to frequent on-chain activities.
2. After a few months of POW transfer to POS, POW rewards for miners will be transferred to POS. At that time, the POS reward of ETH2.0 will suddenly increase, and then more ETH will be staking until the income reaches equilibrium again.
3. ETH will be the most favorable competitor of BTC regarding “Ultrasound Money” (ultimate currency) in the next few years.
4. ETH2.0 will be the most decentralized public chain, there is no one.
03 Matic
Matic is not L2, Matic is not L2, Matic is not L2, the important thing is said three times. No matter how Matic defends it, its essence is still an Ethereum POS sidechain, not L2. Except for the Plasma channel used by Matic’s Token, it can be regarded as L2.
All other Erc20 above are sided chains. Of course, this is also the most complete side-chain/L2 of the ecosystem. Almost all the infrastructure you can think of, Dex, machine gun pool, NFT, etc., you can even find branches opened by the Defi giant here.
Of course, Matic also knew that he was not L2, so he bought an L2 (Hermez) directly, which was an explanation for everyone. You see that we will do L2 sooner or later, but we just advertised it “in advance”. As for when the real L2 can be launched, I have always been curious about this question.
04 Optimistic and Arbitrum
Optimistic (OPT) and Arbitrum (ARB) are the two masters of Optimism Rollup. OPT was originally the most optimistic L2 before ZK went live for many reasons.
1. OPT is the first to do Optimism rollup.
2. As the first well-known project to test Rollup, SNX runs on the OPT testnet.
3. The founder of OPT and the founder of Uniswap are said to be students and college students. Uniswap has also decided to launch OPT a long time ago. As a result, an ARB was launched halfway and all the OPT limelight was robbed…
Technically speaking, OP Rollup is of the same origin, but the details are slightly different. For example, the compatibility mode of EVM, whether the dispute is one round of challenge or multiple rounds of the challenge is not that important.
The most important thing is that OPT bears the stigma of VC (venture capital) capital blessing. Paradigm and A16Z stand behind them. ARB is more like a community project. In this “slightly anti-VC” cultural encryption tribe, the latter is more Lovable. Coupled with the earlier on the mainnet Arb, the Uniswap community voted to deploy Arb directly, and OPT was completely robbed of the limelight.
The current situation is that the number of projects in Arb ecology far exceeds OPT, TVL far exceeds OPT, and Uniswap V3 with ARB and OPT deployed at the same time far exceeds OPT in Arb transaction volume. ARB on native projects has MCDEX, GMX, etc., OPT does not, and Reddit’s community points The solution finally chose ARB among dozens of submissions…
What is curious is how Paradigm and A16Z will “support” OPT to overturn Arb.
05 Zk-sync and Starkware
ZK-Rollup, as the “brightest star” in the expansion of Ethereum, does not know when it will be completely lit, but as a mid-to-long-term expansion plan appointed by V God, it can be said to be the most important expansion method for Ethereum in the next few years. , none of them.
So Zk-sync and Starkware are impossible to avoid. What is the difference between them?
Matter labs have been doing the orthodox Zk rollup. Starkware first produced a Validium (the off-chain version of Zk-rollup). Matter labs said: “Is it really good for you to sacrifice security like this?”
Later, I found out that the TPS under the chain was indeed much higher and Gas was much cheaper, so I also got a ZK-Porter and put the data under the chain. Everyone laughed, isn’t this the Validium of others in your Diss?
Matter Labs justified: “We are not Validium, we are safer than him.” It was quite the feeling that Matic didn’t admit that he was a side chain, not to say he was L2. Then V God also let go, saying that the data is not very safe off-chain, and it is better to use OP.
Of course, this is just an episode. There is no doubt about the technical strength of the two companies. Both on-chain and off-chain data releases have also been made into two different products for customers with different requirements for performance and security.
So apart from the zk-SNARKs used by the zero-knowledge proof technology zk-Sync, Starkware uses zk-STARKs. What is the difference between the two? It may be mainly because of different ideas and styles.
ZK-Sync wants to become an L2 in a completely parallel world with ETH, completely decentralized, completely open, and completely compatible; while Starkware is more like a proprietary extension solution provider, such as dydx, ImmutableX, etc. provide expansion solutions. The two reflect these differences in the underlying design concepts in software licensing, developer stack, and upgradeability.
Which one is better is currently unknown, but Starkware is currently two positions ahead of ZK-Sync thanks to the previous Dydx fire and Immutable X, which will soon be launched in cooperation with Opensea.
However, the curtain of L2 has just opened, and who will be the finale? Let us wait and see, and welcome to share your views in the message area.
