Author: David C Source: bankless Translator: Shan Ouba, Jinse Finance

Has the ultimate solution for Ethereum scaling finally arrived?

Although there is fierce debate around the scaling roadmap, Ethereum's scaling still relies on Rollups. Rollups have undoubtedly driven the success of Ethereum scaling, but the problem of their asynchrony with the mainnet still exists.

Rollups require maintaining dedicated proof mechanisms, adding a lot of complexity and operational costs for each Rollup team. Furthermore, they heavily rely on security councils or governance votes to keep up with Ethereum upgrades, leading to lags and disconnects. The different security assumptions and degrees of centralization adopted by different Rollups have led to ecosystem fragmentation and reduced interoperability. Additionally, every time Ethereum undergoes a hard fork, Rollup teams need to manually update to maintain compatibility, adding to the governance burden and introducing new risks.

Against the backdrop of the debate on Ethereum's scaling roadmap, many have started to consider whether there might be a simpler solution - a L2 solution that does not require heavy maintenance and is always in sync with Ethereum.

This is the idea of Native Rollups - a completely new Rollup design framework that aligns it fundamentally with Ethereum, fully leveraging the security of the mainchain without relying on external oversight or custom logic. Let's dive deeper into this concept and its underlying principles.

Unpacking Native Rollups

Native Rollups, proposed by Ethereum community members like Justin Drake and Dan Robinson, are directly integrated into Ethereum's core transaction rules, allowing Ethereum itself to verify transactions, rather than relying on external proof systems.

Currently, most L2 solutions execute transactions off-chain and use complex proof mechanisms to verify withdrawals and state changes. Native Rollups, on the other hand, take a different approach, leveraging the EXECUTE precompile - a built-in Ethereum function that allows Rollups to directly use Ethereum's verification rules to process transactions, without the need for a separate proof system.

In this architecture, Native Rollups directly publish transaction data to the Ethereum mainnet, and their correctness is enforced by Ethereum itself. This way, they can automatically adapt to Ethereum network upgrades without the need for governance votes or security councils, eliminating many of the complexities and interoperability issues that currently exist.

By eliminating the need to re-build Ethereum logic, Native Rollups reduce maintenance costs, simplify security mechanisms, and make L2 more easily adaptable to Ethereum's ongoing evolution, while maximizing the security guarantees of the mainchain.

Comparing Native Rollups to Other Rollups

To better understand the significance of Native Rollups, we can compare them to other Rollup approaches currently being explored.

▪️ Based Rollups

Based Rollups, first proposed by Vitalik Buterin in 2021 and formally defined by Justin Drake in 2023, fully rely on Ethereum L1 validators to order transactions, thereby increasing the decentralization of transaction ordering.

Although there are no fully deployed Based Rollups yet, teams like Taiko and Spire Labs are actively pushing for their deployment. While Ethereum's involvement enhances decentralization, Based Rollups still need to manage their own proof systems. Due to the longer block times of Ethereum L1, the user experience may be affected, though improvements in pre-confirmation mechanisms are mitigating this issue.

▪️ Booster Rollups

Booster Rollups aim to enhance scalability by replicating Ethereum L1's execution and storage processes as much as possible on Layer 2, allowing applications to scale without major refactoring.

While this approach makes it easier for existing applications to scale, it is more complex than traditional Rollups, as it requires more intricate engineering design and unique proof mechanisms. Although Booster Rollups aim to achieve stronger composability and simpler application deployment, they still face challenges in terms of economic incentives and user experience.

▪️ Native Rollups

As mentioned earlier, unlike the above two approaches, Native Rollups do not require a separate proof framework or external validators, as all verification is performed by Ethereum itself. This significantly reduces the complexity of L2 and simplifies its interaction with L1.

The key advantages of Native Rollups:

Greatly enhanced security: Users can hold assets on Native Rollups and trust them as they would trust Ethereum L1, as the risk of attacks on the multi-sig or security councils relied upon by traditional Rollups is greatly reduced.

Simpler development: No need for custom fraud proofs or zero-knowledge proofs, reducing the complexity of deployment and maintenance.

Closer alignment with Ethereum: Native Rollups automatically inherit Ethereum's upgrades, ensuring consistency and improving interoperability. They will also benefit from Ethereum's future quantum security mechanisms.

More efficient ZK proofs: Native Rollups can efficiently bundle multiple zero-knowledge proofs, reducing the verification costs of ZK Rollups.

Applicable for new application chains: For decentralized applications seeking the highest level of security, they can choose to be "native", avoiding the need to re-implement the EVM and only adding their own unique features.

If a Rollup is both Native and Based - i.e., Ethereum manages both transaction ordering and transaction verification - then it becomes a "Supersonic Rollup". This type of Rollup fully leverages Ethereum's security and is fully aligned with Ethereum's long-term scaling roadmap, making it the ideal Rollup form.

Limitations of Native Rollups

While Native Rollups solve the challenges of governance and security, they do not completely eliminate Ethereum's scaling constraints and may even impose additional constraints on ecosystem diversity in certain aspects.

L1 Gas limit still exists: The Gas limit on the Ethereum mainnet still applies, and if every transaction must be re-executed on L1, it may lead to inefficiency. Therefore, additional combination with zero-knowledge or Optimistic solutions is needed to scale more efficiently.

Lack of support for diverse virtual machines: Native Rollups must strictly adhere to the EVM model, meaning they cannot support other emerging virtual machine architectures like SVM or MoveVM, which are gradually gaining market attention.

Increased data availability costs: The EXECUTE precompile relied upon by Native Rollups will significantly increase data availability costs, potentially leading to a 5-10x increase in L2 overhead, affecting their economic viability.

Furthermore, many Rollups are currently EVM-compatible but not entirely equivalent to EVM. Transitioning to a Native Rollup would require major architectural adjustments, which can be challenging. The design of Native Rollups may not support certain custom transaction formats or Gas calculation methods, such as the model where applications or wallets subsidize user Gas fees. This poses some trade-offs in terms of user experience (UX).

An Important Step Forward

Although Native Rollups represent a significant advancement in Ethereum's scaling roadmap, not all Rollups will adopt this model. Instead, industry experts (such as Dogan from Cyber Fund) believe that the future Rollup ecosystem may form three main types:

• Enterprise Rollups: Customized and controlled by enterprises to meet their specific needs, such as transaction ordering, privacy protection, etc.

• Performance-Optimized Rollups: Improve transaction speed and reduce costs through alternative data availability solutions (such as EigenDA).

• Native Rollups: Fully integrated into Ethereum, inherit L1 security, and automatically upgrade, without the need for external governance or independent proof mechanisms.

This classification method encourages the coexistence of various scaling solutions, while allowing different Rollups to innovate technologically while retaining Ethereum's trust and security. Justin Drake predicts that the first batch of native Rollups may be launched next year. However, to achieve full technical maturity (such as native support for ZK proofs, and increasing L1 Gas limits), broader community coordination and verification is still required, and the full implementation may be further delayed to the more distant future.

Although native Rollups may not be the only solution for Ethereum scaling, they provide a simpler, more secure, and deeply integrated scaling approach. Ultimately, native Rollups provide a clear development direction for L2s, allowing them to always stay in sync with the Ethereum mainnet, thereby delivering a smoother and more secure experience for users, developers, and the entire ecosystem.