The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is facing severe scalability challenges, as evidenced by the congestion and high gas prices observed. While Layer 2 solutions have been proposed to mitigate these issues, they may merely represent a temporary fix rather than a long-term solution. Layer 2s often struggle with centralization, interoperability, and can fragment liquidity, which complicates user experience. Critics suggest that instead of focusing on Layer 2, the blockchain community should prioritize enhancing Layer 1 infrastructure. By adopting a new performance metric called 'gas per second,' which evaluates the computational resources needed for different transaction types, the industry can better understand and improve blockchain performance. This approach involves rethinking the EVM's architecture, considering techniques like parallelization, and transforming consensus mechanisms. The author argues that true scalability and efficiency for the EVM lie in revamping Layer 1 networks rather than relying on Layer 2 solutions, which have been overstated as the key to enhancing performance.

Source 🔗