Vitalik is wary of overly complex Layer 2.

A commonly held belief in the blockchain community is that the design of layer 1 networks should be as simple as possible without sacrificing functionality to minimize the potential for serious bugs and attack vectors for malicious actors. As a result, scaling solutions such as Layer 2 networks are expected to take on the burden of more complex functions.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin is still not convinced, he posted on social media on Wednesday. repeat His concerns are about layer 2, which is very complex.

Buterin went on to point out that while Layer 1 blockchains can recover relatively quickly from potential consensus failures, if there are serious bugs in the Layer 2 network code, “people could permanently lose a lot of money.”

He concluded by calling for a balanced approach and suggesting that “it may actually be worthwhile to add very sophisticated L1 features to reduce the code burden on the L2 and make it reasonably simple.”

The cryptocurrency ecosystem has evolved significantly over the past decade through the emergence of various blockchain ecosystems centered around layer 1 networks such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana.

With developers seeking to create increasingly complex on-chain applications, interest in recent years has shifted to scaling solutions in the form of Layer 2 networks. This solution bundles transactions running on separate networks together and submits them in batches for verification at Layer 1, significantly increasing throughput and reducing transaction fees.

Ethereum’s layer 2 ecosystem has grown tremendously over the past year and a half, with a total value locked (TVL) of over $27 billion. According to L2beat, transaction activity surpassed mainnet in October 2022, with layer 2 now routinely processing five times more transactions.