Because Ethereum’s adoption has strained its original design, the protocol and its community have prioritized layer 2 scaling and complementary upgrades to reconcile throughput with security. The conference presentation outlined how Layer 2 solutions move computation and state off-chain while anchoring security on Layer 1, a model that enlarges capacity without altering core consensus, and attendees were shown that this architectural choice preserves Ethereum’s decentralization goals while addressing a base-layer throughput of roughly 15–30 transactions per second. Speakers noted that Layer 2 reduces gas fees and congestion, improving user experience during surges such as NFT mania and DeFi activity, and that the tradeoffs among different L2 types determine suitable use cases for exchanges, gaming, and high-frequency dApps. This approach also enhances data privacy by leveraging cryptographic safeguards inherent in blockchain technology.
Layer 2 scaling preserves Ethereum’s decentralization while boosting capacity, lowering fees, and easing congestion for high-demand dApps.
The report described Optimistic Rollups as a pragmatic approach, wherein transactions execute off-chain under an assumption of validity, and fraud proofs on Layer 1 enable dispute resolution during challenge periods; this design yields significant throughput and cost improvements, retains smart contract expressiveness, and supports interoperability with the Ethereum mainnet, as evidenced by deployments like Arbitrum and Optimism. The delegation to challenge-based security implies latency for finality that stakeholders must accept, and the conference emphasized careful design of challenge windows and fraud-proof tooling to mitigate economic and operational risks.
The delegation also highlighted zk-Rollups, which use succinct zero-knowledge proofs to validate batched transactions and publish compact validity proofs on-chain, delivering near-instant finality and high security without lengthy challenges, and implementations such as Loopring and zkSync were presented as examples that achieve thousands of transactions per second and materially lower gas costs. The discussion warned that zk technology introduces its own complexity in prover infrastructure and upgrade paths, requiring engineering investment and coordination across ecosystems.
Attendees reviewed sidechains and hybrid models, which provide flexible throughput and privacy properties by operating under separate consensus mechanisms, noting that these options can erode some security guarantees relative to rollups and thus suit enterprise or privacy-focused deployments. The roadmap section framed Proto-Danksharding (EIP-4844) as a complementary enhancement to rollups, intended to expand data availability and further reduce costs, while cautioning that implementation timelines and cross-layer compatibility remain operational considerations. An additional point stressed the importance of developer tooling and onboarding to accelerate L2 adoption, highlighting developer experience as a key factor for mainstream growth. The presenters also pointed to growing investment interest in specific Layer 2 projects as drivers of ecosystem momentum, especially in areas like zk-Rollups.
