Restoring Ethereum’s Authenticity with Rollups: A Simple Explanation

Have you been feeling the frustration of navigating Ethereum’s L2 ecosystem lately? You’re not alone. The congestion and high gas fees on the base layer have caused headaches for many users. But fear not—based rollups might be the solution we’ve been waiting for.

What are based rollups, you ask? Well, they could be the key to bringing back interoperability and composability to Ethereum’s L2s. Essentially, based rollups aim to address the problem of individual sequencers on L2s, which currently contribute to the fragmentation of the ecosystem. These sequencers, while efficient, isolate different L2s and hinder interoperability between them.

Proposed by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, based rollups push transaction sequencing back to Ethereum’s L1, similar to how things operated before L2s entered the picture. This promises not only to improve interoperability but also to make transactions cheaper, faster, and more sustainable for the network.

One of the first based rollups in production is Taiko, which is already making waves by returning five times as much revenue to Ethereum compared to other rollups with centralized sequencers. However, despite the promise of based rollups, there are still challenges to overcome.

For users to fully benefit from based rollups, other L2s need to adopt them as well. Projects like Taiko are working on solutions to bridge different L2s and improve the user experience. While the road ahead may have its bumps, the potential for based rollups to transform the Ethereum ecosystem is exciting.

So, if you’ve been feeling frustrated by the lack of interoperability and barriers between Ethereum’s L2s, based rollups might just be the ray of hope we’ve been waiting for. Let’s keep our eyes on how this technology unfolds and brings Ethereum back to being, well, Ethereum again.