Layer-2 Blockchains/Solutions to Watch in 2023
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With the rise of the crypto market since the start of this year comes the excitement about a (potential) bull run sometime this year…and all the mania associated with NFT, DeFi and other aspects of this space.
However, high Ethereum gas (gwei) fees led to some astronomical costs associated with minting and trading NFTs (more on these later) throughout 2021, primarily due to network congestion; like much of the supply and demand in our society, priority is often given to those who fork out the most money on these transactions.
How do we overcome the cost and congestion issues? Layer 2 scaling solutions, a.k.a. L2s.
What is a layer 2 scaling solution?
In a nutshell, a layer 2 is an additional chain sitting on top of a mainnet (or main chain) such as Bitcoin, Ethereum or a similar network in need of dealing with many more transactions per second than what it currently can.
Additionally, batching transactions (rollups — I will expand on them later), processing them away from the main chain (off-chain) and spreading gas costs help significantly lower fees on Ethereum.
They are designed to improve the speed and efficiency of the primary…
