Perspective of: Adrian Brink, co-founder of Anoma
Rollups have become a popular solution to Ethereum's scalability problem. However, as the ecosystem expands, the challenges created by rollups — including fragmented state and continuous liquidity, and an inability to create a consistent user experience — are becoming critical barriers to Ethereum's development.
Rollups alone cannot unlock any fundamentally new functionality or capabilities for developers. We need new approaches to blockchain architecture to fully harness Ethereum's potential, rather than continuing to innovate at the periphery.
The risk of rollup fragmentation
Most rollups are essentially copies or minor variants of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). While they reduce transaction fees by offloading computation from the main chain, they do not address the need for state scaling or drive new use cases or innovation. This also applies to alternative virtual machines (altVMs), which provide developers with new programming language options. However, altVMs do not bring any fundamentally new functionality to the ecosystem. The predominant use of rollups is driven by yield farming programs, lacking practical applications to push the ecosystem forward.
The proliferation of rollups stems from fragmented state and liquidity, leading to limited user and developer experiences and adoption. To unlock innovation, we need new approaches to application development. To achieve true scalability, we need better ways to manage state and data.
The real scalability challenge lies in data and state.
Rollups alone are not the right scaling solution. It would be more accurate to call them fragmented execution solutions. Scaling computation is not the complex problem — the complex problem is scaling access and distribution of data and state. Rollups still rely on Ethereum for data availability and security. While this improves the transaction process, it does nothing to enhance the fundamental capabilities of Ethereum in the long run.
While zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups bring significant cryptographic advances and allow us to not do everything entirely on-chain, the ecosystem does not need 200 copies or minor variants of the EVM, each with their own decentralized exchanges (DEXes).
Currently, rollups are not enough to solve the real bottleneck in blockchain scaling: data storage and state management. We need solutions that can scale data and state.
Plasma and intents will unlock true scalability and spur innovation.
The only viable solution for true scalability at the moment is Plasma-like structures. Plasma removes the dependency on a single data availability layer. It allows a world where critical data and computation can be kept on user devices. The amount of data a rollup needs to post to the main chain scales linearly with its usage, which is not a proper scaling solution. With Plasma, we can post a fixed amount of data to the main chain regardless of user throughput.
Scalability is not the only challenge. We also need to enable innovation at the application layer. New approaches to blockchain architecture and new primitives for application development are necessary. This is where purpose-driven architecture shines.
Intents provide a new model for building decentralized applications, simplifying the complexity of blockchain infrastructure for users. Intents focus on the "what" and care less about the "how," requiring users to specify what they want to achieve without the need for specific intermediary steps.
Building DApps on an intent-centric operating system allows developers to access state and liquidity from anywhere in the Ethereum ecosystem (including Layer 2) and use the Ethereum main chain (or any Layer 2) as a settlement layer. Generalized intents can facilitate the sharing of Ethereum rollup ordering, reducing state fragmentation across chains and allowing developers to view the entire multi-chain landscape as a unified development environment.
By combining the scalability potential of Plasma-like approaches with the advantages of an intent-driven system, we can unlock new functionality and use cases for rollups, ending the stagnation and fragmentation.
Unlocking the true potential of blockchain with intents
The blockchain space needs to evolve beyond the current infrastructure-centric focus to build user-friendly applications that provide real utility. Rollups are essential for Ethereum's development, but intents can help them unlock a new wave of innovation. It's time to ask whether we are building technology to solve real-world problems or simply creating more complex systems serving similar limited functions.
With new approaches like intent-driven machines, combined with the scalability potential of Plasma, we can start unlocking a new model of innovation for developers and better experiences for users, bringing the space closer to the usability of Web2. This evolution benefits rollups and the entire space.
Rollups have gone in the right direction, but have led to a more complex Web3 experience. To unlock blockchain's potential, we need to be bolder in our innovations and more focused on addressing fundamental issues. Only then can we hope to realize the crucial vision of blockchain technology, which is to bring autonomy and resilience to the systems we rely on daily.
Adrian Brink is the co-founder of Anoma, a decentralized operating system for intention-oriented applications. He is also the co-founder of Cryptium Labs, a PoS infrastructure operator, and was previously a core protocol engineer on the Cosmos stack at Tendermint. Adrian currently serves on the Anoma Foundation Board. Bitcoin News Aggregator
