Debate ignited as Polygon CEO points out L3s’ diminishing value impact on Ethereum

The CEO of Polygon, Marc Boiron, has sparked a heated debate regarding layer-3 networks and their necessity in scaling Ethereum. Boiron argues that layer-3s are unnecessary and only serve to take value away from the mainnet. On April 1, he stated that Polygon Labs, a layer-2 scaling network, does not utilize layer-3s as they are not crucial for scaling existing networks. Boiron believes that L3s only divert value from Ethereum to the L2s they are built on. However, his comments received pushback, with one respondent asserting that layer-2s are indeed valuable on Ethereum. Boiron partially agreed, but emphasized that Polygon’s goal is not to extract all value onto its networks, but rather to share Ethereum’s fair share. He stated that Polygon’s mission is to scale Ethereum using parallelization of the EVM and privacy, which he believes L3s are not aligned with. L3 protocols are constructed on top of L2s to facilitate application-specific DApps, offering solutions for scaling, performance, interoperability, customization, and costs. Notably, the L3 ecosystem is still relatively small, with only four L3 tokens listed by CoinGecko. Leading players in this sector include Orbs, Xai, zkSync Hyperchains, and the recently launched Degen Chain on Arbitrum Orbit. Despite Boiron’s stance, Peter Haymond, the senior partnership manager at Offchain Labs, argues that L3s have numerous benefits that do not detract value from Ethereum, such as low bridging costs and specialized state transition functions. Patrick McCorry, a researcher at the Arbitrum Foundation, expressed surprise at Boiron’s perspective. Another individual who supports Boiron’s viewpoint is Mert Mumtaz, the CEO of Helus Labs, who described L3s as centralized servers settling on other centralized servers (L2s) controlled by multisigs. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin previously ignited the L3 debate in 2022 by stating that layer-3s would serve a distinct purpose by providing customized functionality. He emphasized that a third layer on the blockchain only makes sense if it offers different functions than layer-2s. In conclusion, the question remains: what were Satoshi Nakamoto’s views on ZK-proofs?