Ethereum's Rollup-Centric Future

Key Insights

• In order to mitigate its current scalability problem, Ethereum is pivoting to a “Rollup-Centric Roadmap,” combining the best of on-chain and off-chain scaling solutions.
• Ethereum’s on-chain scaling solution, danksharding, provides ample data space for Layer-2 scaling solutions like Optimistic and ZK-rollups to flourish.
• Both Optimistic and ZK-rollups have their disadvantages: most Optimistic rollups suffer from lengthy withdrawal periods between layers, and ZK-rollups tend to be too computation-intensive to provide seamless composability.
• To remain viable in a rollup-centric future, rollup solutions must prioritize decreasing execution cost, cross-layer interoperability, and user privacy.

Scalability is the means of increasing the speed and throughput of a blockchain while minimizing cost and without sacrificing decentralization or security. Ethereum is currently not scalable. With an increasing number of users over the past two years, Ethereum transaction costs have skyrocketed, rendering the network almost useless for everyday investors.

There are two core options for scaling Ethereum: on-chain and off-chain. In combination with The Merge, the Ethereum team is introducing an on-chain scaling solution with the introduction of a new sharding design called danksharding. These changes are expected to occur sometime in the next few months.