Author: OnChainChad
Compiled by: Felix, PANews
Are you regretting missing the LSD bull market before the upgrade in Shanghai? Not to worry, the Cancun upgrade - an upgrade that directly benefits Layer2 (L2) tokens is coming.
What benefits will the Cancun upgrade bring and how will it affect the L2s?
In short, the Cancun upgrade will make L2 10-100x faster and cheaper.
Some people may ask, how is this possible?
Fundamentally, L2 needs to submit L2 txs to L1 (Ethereum) to achieve the same level of security as L1.
Before the Cancun upgrade, L2 txs were stored in Calldata of L1 txs. But this method is costly, and the space of Calldata is limited.
After the Cancun upgrade, L1 will be stored in a new location called "Blob". Blob storage costs less and has more space.
So, here's a quick calculation:
If L2 has 1000 txs stored in L1, 1 Calldata can store up to 100 L2 txs at a cost of 1 ETH.
If there are 1000 L2 txs, 10 Calldata are required and the cost is 10 ETH.
If stored in Blob, 1000 L2 txs can be stored in 1 Blob, and the cost of 1 Blob is 0.1 ETH.
Before the Cancun upgrade:
1 L2 transaction will cost 10/1000= 0.01 ETH
After the Cancun upgrade:
1 L2 transaction will cost 0.1/1000= 0.0001 ETH
100 times cheaper.
Note that for an L2 transaction to be finalized, it must be stored in Ethereum. Therefore, if you want to confirm 1000 L2 txs, it is also related to the time to submit to L1. So another math problem:
Stored in Blob, you can use 1 L1 txs to confirm 1000 L2 txs, but stored in Calldata, you need 10 L1 txs to confirm 1000 L2 txs.
Therefore, stored on the Blob, you can confirm 10 times more L2 txs than before, and the larger the space, the faster the speed.
The actual logic and data is much more complex, but all you need to know is:
The Cancun upgrade will make L2s cheaper and faster.
Now you might see L2s costing even more than L1s, but after the Cancun upgrade, things will be a lot better.
Now that I know the basic logic, what should I do to prepare? What projects should be invested in? Here is a list. Both L2 projects and tokens will benefit from the Cancun upgrade.
ARB, OP
These two are the top projects of Layer2. If there is L2 Summer, these two tokens will definitely benefit the most.
Arbitrum and Optimism have the highest TVL and the most users, and have been running for many years, with a mature ecosystem.
Assessment: Low Risk Moderate Reward
Boba, Metis
These two are early Optimism fork projects, and the two tokens have fallen for a year, so now is a relatively good time to enter.
Assessment: Moderate risk but high reward
LRC, IMX, dYdX
These are early zk-based projects that can develop their own application-specific Rollup, and issued tokens. They would be excellent investment targets for zk Layer2s.
Matic
The "Polygon " currently in use is not L2, but they have several ZK Layer2 solutions, including the Polygon ZKEVM that has launched the Mainnet .
Evaluation: The market capitalization of Matic is already very high, so the expected return on investment is relatively small.
SHIB, CULT
SHIB and Cult.DAO have stated that they will launch Layer 2 this year. If the launch is successful and the ecosystem grows, they will be included in the L2 narrative like YFI and FXS.
Layer2 Ecological Project
The fast and cheap network brought about by the Cancun upgrade will also promote the development of projects built on top of L2. for example:
GMX , GNS, RDNT, JOE, etc. in the Arb ecosystem.
SNX , PERP, KWENTA, etc. in the OP ecosystem.
And other zkRollup ecological projects.
ZKS, STARK, SCROLL
None of these 3 issued coins, and if they issued coins (in any form), they would be as important as ARB and OP, if not better, because the crypto industry regards zkRollup as a more advanced Rollup solution. In addition, pay attention to AirDrop, which are expected to have a high probability.
