In tackling Ethereum’s scalability challenges, rollups have emerged as the popular solution. Yet, as Ethereum's ecosystem evolves, the limitations of rollups—namely fragmentation of state and liquidity and the fragmented user experience they engender—present significant hurdles. According to Adrian Brink, co-founder of Anoma, to truly harness Ethereum's potential, it's imperative to innovate beyond rollups with new blockchain architectures that address these core issues.
Rollups, often just modified versions of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), primarily aim to cut transaction costs by shifting computations off the main chain, but they fall short in addressing critical scalability concerns—especially in terms of state management and innovation, Brink claims, obviously not being afraid to post controversial opinions.
Alternative virtual machines (altVMs) offer different programming languages but lack the transformative capabilities needed, Brink says. Presently, rollups mainly facilitate points farming rather than driving meaningful progression in the space.
This reliance on rollups perpetuates a fragmented landscape, hindering user experience, developer engagement, and widespread adoption. For true innovation, we must rethink application development approaches, emphasizing better state and data management mechanisms to achieve genuine scalability.
Rollups are not synonymous with scaling; they're more accurately described as execution-sharding tactics. While computing scalability poses a manageable problem, tackling state and data distribution complexities remains challenging. According to Brink, rollups continue to depend heavily on Ethereum for data security and availability, enhancing transactions but not fundamentally boosting the network's base capacity.
Even zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups, with their considerable cryptographical progress, do not eliminate the fragmented EVM landscape, brimming with decentralized exchanges (DEXs). Therefore, rollups fall short in resolving the critical bottlenecks of data storage and state management in blockchain scalability. It is the task of finding solutions to efficiently scale both data and state.
Plasma architectures emerge as a promising path to true scalability, offering independence from a singular data availability infrastructure. They allow extensive data and computing tasks to remain offchain, such as on user devices. Unlike traditional rollups, Plasma enables consistent data posting to the main chain, regardless of user activity.
Innovation must extend beyond scalability. New paradigms in blockchain architectures and application development are essential. Intent-centric architectures provide that innovation spark. Intents simplify user interaction with decentralized applications, focusing purely on user objectives rather than procedural complexities.
Building decentralized applications (DApps) on intent-centric platforms allows developers to tap into Ethereum's ecosystem's state and liquidity efficiently. They can leverage both the Ethereum main chain and its layer 2 solutions as settlement layers. Intents can synchronize Ethereum rollups, defragmenting state across chains and enabling developers to view the multichain environment as a unified platform. To enhance user utility, the blockchain space must transcend its current infrastructure constraints. While rollups are critical to Ethereum's journey, the integration of intents can spark a new innovation wave, questioning whether the technology addresses genuine issues or just replicates existing systems' complexities.
The convergence of intent-centric innovations and the scalability potential of Plasma could usher in a novel innovation era for developers and users, aligning blockchain more closely with Web2 usability standards. This evolution not only benefits rollups but also strengthens the entire blockchain landscape.
Rollups, while important, have complicated the Web3 experience, Brink argues. To fully unlock blockchain’s potential, we must embrace boldness in our innovations and prioritize addressing foundational challenges. This strategy will help achieve blockchain technology's ultimate vision: enhancing the sovereignty and resilience of crucial systems in our daily lives.