It's easy as 1 2 3

🚦When it comes to blockchain technology, you may have heard of L0s, L1s, and L2s, but what do they all mean?

💡 To truly get a handle on the blockchain landscape, it's crucial to understand the difference between those Layers.

At first were the Layer 1 (L1) like Ethereum . The chains you probably know and love the most. They implement fancy consensus mechanisms and try to solve the Blockchain Trilemma ♻️ (Scalability, Security and Decentralization). They are the layer on which developers build their #Dapps (Dencentralized applications). However, because of their monolithic approach, L1 often manage to tackle decentralization and security, but often fall short on scalability.

Which is why Layer 2 (L2) protocols were born.

They come in two forms 👇

  • ⚙️ Optimistic Rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism ➡️ They process transactions off-chain in bundles and then send them back to the L1 with a dispute period within which transactions can be contested.
  • ⚙️ Zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups like StarkNet ➡️ Use a "trick" to validate transactions securely and very quickly (That one needs a dedicated post to be further explained).

Without going into more details, you should remember that those solutions greatly increase the transaction throughput of Ethereum.

However, L2s still rely on the architecture of the L1 underneath, from which they inherit their properties.

This is why some people came with the idea of Layer 0 networks. Think of L0 protocols as an infrastructure on top of which blockchains can be built.

For instance Polkadot (L0) let developers build parachains (L1) on top of its foundations. Those parallel chains are extremely customizable while being interoperable, which means they can send data to each other without the need to rely on bridges.

Famous parachains built on Polkadot include Moonbeam and Effinity.

Let's wrap up :

  • 0️⃣ L0 are foundational networks, on top of which interoperable L1s can be built.
  • 1️⃣ L1 are the main blockchains that handle transactions and on top of which developers can build Dapps.
  • 2️⃣ L2 are protocols trying to solve scalability issues of L1s.

That's all for today folks ! I hope you enjoyed this post. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, or if you believe I missed something, I'd gladly hear your feedback.

See you in my next post -)