Blockchain Layers — Explained
Article Gist: Illustrate every layer function in the most simple way
Until this article was published, there are three layers in the crypto world, let’s begin with my illustration:
1. Layer Zero
As you can see, there’s a ground that illustrates layer 0 as the basis. Simply, layer 0 is a blockchain that connects one blockchain to another blockchain, its main purpose is to solve the interoperability problem, which surely helped the blockchain developers to access, and share information across different blockchain networks.
Not only that, layer 0 blockchains also contain an SDK (Software Development Tools Kit). With SDK, developers could build a layer 1 blockchain in a shorter time, with more affordable cost and easier collecting data.
2. Layer One
Move to the layer 1 blockchain, it’s the most commonly used blockchain. If we look at the illustration above, layer 1 is like the buildings built on layer 0 land, that buildings contain so many stores (Decentralize Applications), like uniswap, pancakeswap, APE coin, and many other Dapps.
There are two types of layer 1 blockchains; the first ones are the layer 1 blockchains built without using a layer 0 SDK, for example, there are Solana, Cardano, and Avalanche. And for the second ones are layer 1 built using a layer 0 SDK, like Terra Luna and Binance Coin (BNB)
Layer 1 blockchains could stand by themselves without using any layer 0 blockchains, it’s like layer 0 is just a helping tool for layer 1
Layer 1 blockchain projects: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, etc
3. Layer Two
Moving on to the last layer, we could call it the side chain or the extension chain that can help layer 1 blockchains solve their various problems. These problems are likely known as the blockchain trilemma, it’s a situation where a blockchain could only choose two between scalability, decentralization, and security.
You can imagine that you should maintain your social life, work performance, and sleep at the same time. Sounds hard right? There’s always something you should sacrifice for the goods of the other options
For Ethereum itself, the developers choose the decentralization and the security options, so they are forced to sacrifice scalability. To maintain the blockchain performance, they use layer 2 blockchains like Polygon (Matic) for their scaling solutions.
Layer 2 blockchain projects: Polygon, Synthetix, Immutable X
