Since pivoting to a layer 2-centric approach, the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem has relied heavily on L2 solutions to scale. However, these solutions are struggling to compete effectively, especially under pressure from alternatives like Solana (SOL). During the recent meme coin craze, Solana attracted much of the activity due to its advantages: low fees, high transaction speed, and user-friendliness.

To understand the challenges, it’s essential to examine why L2 solutions have not demonstrated the scalability and cost advantages that were widely anticipated.

Why meme projects favor Solana over Ethereum L2s

Meme projects have significantly contributed to the recent surge in market activity. These projects favor Solana for several reasons beyond user-friendliness:

• Low fees: Solana’s low transaction costs make it ideal for fee-sensitive applications like memecoins.
• High speed: Solana’s multithreaded architecture enables high throughput, ensuring seamless user experiences.
• Better developer experience: Solana’s tools and ecosystem are optimized for ease of use, attracting developers and projects.

Why is scalability important?

Scalability is fundamentally measured by the number of transactions a blockchain can process. A highly scalable blockchain can handle more TXs while offering lower fees, making it crucial for widespread adoption and maintaining a seamless user experience.

This is especially important for grassroots projects like meme coins, many of which are short-lived and highly fee-sensitive. Without scalability, these projects cannot thrive, and users will migrate to platforms that offer better efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Why Ethereum L2s aren’t up to the challenge

Architectural limitations of Ethereum. Ethereum has long faced scalability issues, and L2 rollups are its primary solution to these problems. L2s operate as independent blockchains that process transactions off-chain while posting transaction results and proofs back to Ethereum’s mainnet. They inherit Ethereum’s security, making them a promising scaling approach.

However, Ethereum’s original design poses inherent challenges. Ethereum’s founder, Vitalik Buterin, has admitted that “Ethereum was never designed for scalability.” One of the key limitations is the lack of multithreading in the Ethereum Virtual Machine. The EVM, which processes transactions, is strictly single-threaded, meaning it can handle only one transaction at a time. In contrast, Solana’s multithreaded architecture allows it to process multiple transactions simultaneously, significantly increasing throughput.

L2s inheriting Ethereum’s limitations. Virtually all L2 solutions inherit Ethereum’s single-threaded EVM design, which results in low efficiency. For instance, Arbitrum: With a targeted gas limit of 7 million per second and each coin transfer costing 21,000 gas, Arbitrum can handle about 333 simple transactions per second. More complex smart contract calls consume even more gas, significantly reducing capacity. Optimism: With a gas limit of 5 million per block and a block time of 2 seconds, Optimism can handle only about 119 simple transfers per second. Gas-intensive operations further reduce this capacity.

Unstable fees. Another major issue with Ethereum and its L2 solutions is unstable fees during periods of high network activity. For applications relying on low and stable fees, this is a critical drawback. Projects like meme coins are especially fee-sensitive, making Ethereum-based L2s less attractive.

Lack of interoperability between L2s. The scalability argument for having multiple L2s only holds if contracts on different L2s can interact freely. However, rollups are essentially independent blockchains, and accessing data from one rollup to another is as challenging as cross-chain communication. This lack of interoperability significantly limits the potential of L2 scalability.

What can L2s do to further scale?

Embed features to enhance interoperability. Ethereum L1 needs to do more to support interoperability among L2s. For example, the recent ERC-7786: Cross-Chain Messaging Gateway is a step in the right direction. While it doesn’t fully resolve the interoperability issue, it simplifies communication between L2s and L1, laying the groundwork for further improvements.

Architectural updates: Diverge from the existing L1 design. To compete with multithreaded blockchains like Solana, L2s must break free from Ethereum’s single-threaded EVM design and adopt parallel execution. This may require a complete overhaul of the EVM, but the potential scalability gains make it a worthwhile endeavor.

Future milestones

Ethereum’s L2 solutions face significant challenges in delivering the scalability and cost-effectiveness that applications like meme coins demand. To stay competitive, the ecosystem must address fundamental architectural limitations, enhance interoperability, and embrace innovations in blockchain design. Only by doing so can Ethereum L2s achieve the scalability needed to support widespread adoption and fend off competition from emerging blockchains like Solana.

Laurent Zhang

Laurent Zhang is the president and founder of Arcology Network, a revolutionizing Ethereum layer-2 solution with the first-ever EVM-equivalent, multithreaded rollup—offering unparalleled performance and efficiency for developers building the next generation of decentralized applications. With an executive leadership and innovation background, Laurent holds a degree from Oxford Brookes University. Laurent’s professional journey includes over a decade of experience in science, research, engineering, and leadership roles. After graduating in 2005, he joined MKS Instruments as an Algorithm Engineer. From 2010 to 2012, he worked as a research engineer at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, followed by a position as a research scientist at Baker Hughes from 2012 to 2014. He then served as vice president of engineering at Quikflo Health between 2016 and 2018. Since 2017, Laurent has been the president of Arcology Network, being a visionary of a future where blockchain technology reaches its full potential, offering unmatched scalability, efficiency, and innovation.

Three coins have risen to the top of the leaderboard: The Dogeson, a playful nod to Elon Musk, his son and Dogecoin; Shiro Neko, a cat-themed token tied to gaming and NFTs; and Orbit, a space-inspired coin.

These tokens topped the gainers’ charts on Saturday night. Here’s a closer look at each.

Dogeson

The Dogeson (DOGESON), a Doge-inspired coin named after an edited photo Elon Musk posted of himself and his son, X Æ A-12, is up more than 90% at last check Saturday.

With a market cap reaching $146.6 million, the token is built on the Ethereum blockchain and has garnered attention for its narrative of a “space-bound Doge” — meshing humor with a decentralized finance (DeFi) theme​.

Details about The Dogeson’s founding team or developers were not immediately clear.

Shiro Neko

Shiro Neko (SHIRO) is a new cryptocurrency project that blends blockchain technology with play-to-earn (P2E) gaming.

Its ecosystem is built around a native token that can be used for in-game purchases, staking, and governance.

It’s up over 83% at last check, with a market cap of about $441 million.

The project emphasizes a community-driven approach, immersive gaming experiences, and collectible in-game assets, including NFTs. It aims to attract both gamers and crypto enthusiasts through competitive challenges and real-world rewards​

Shiro Neko is also building on Shibarium, the Layer 2 blockchain for the Shiba Inu ecosystem, further anchoring itself in a popular crypto community. Additionally, the project is venturing into entertainment by launching an animated series featuring “Shiro” the cat.

The token recently had its Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) on Gate.io, with 88 billion tokens available for sale, representing 0.01% of its total supply of 1 quadrillion tokens.

This reflects a focus on early adoption and community-building in the crypto-gaming landscape​.

Orbit

Orbit (ORBIT) was up 77.6% at last check Saturday, with a market cap of roughly $44 million.

Built on the Blast Chain, the native utility token of the Orbit Protocol serves multiple purposes including facilitating governance, incentivizing participants, and enabling staking for rewards.

The protocol also boasts a Total Value Locked (TVL) of over $6.4 million and a fixed total supply of 100 million.

As of now, ORBIT’s market performance shows significant price fluctuations, with a 24-hour range of $0.02543 and $0.06379.

Dave Sandor, former executive director at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for the Asia Pacific region, announced his new role as co-founder at OpenZK Network, a solution designed for ZK-Rollup scaling.

OpenZK announced Dave Sandor would be joining as co-founder to spearhead advancements in ZK-Rollup scaling solutions on X. Sandor has worked as an executive director at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to focus more on product structure, integrating institutional finance into potential decentralized finance. At OpenZK Network, Sandor will lead the development of next-generation Layer 2 solutions, focusing on improving the ecosystem’s reward mechanism and user experience. 

“Dave’s unique expertise positions us to advance the L2 landscape, delivering performance, security, rewards and a superb user experience for our entire ecosystem — from developers to traders to institutional partners.”

OpenZK’s X post

OpenZK has become the first native to support Ethereum (ETH) staking, re-staking, or liquidity, as well as stablecoin staking L2 scaling solution. Real-world assets, stablecoins, and staking are services that cater to these fast-growing segments in the DeFi.

With the growing momentum of L2 solutions, Sandor’s financial acumen is expected to be pivotal in guiding OpenZK’s strategic growth and development.

ZK-Rollups current challenges

ZK-Rollups are important for solving the issues blockchain has been struggling with for quite a while, such as scalability, cost, and privacy. They do this using an off-chain bundle of transactions that are validated using zero-knowledge proofs submitted to the main chain. This greatly alleviates congestion and gas fees for networks such as Ethereum while maintaining security. 

Furthermore, experts also have explained that ZK-Rollups offer improved privacy by only requiring proof of transactions to be verified without having to expose sensitive information such as the contents of those transactions, making them suitable for privacy-concerned applications such as identities and financial services that need to build trust amongst users. 

Despite these benefits, they also come along with several disadvantages. Some of them include complex development, computation-intensive proofs, difficulty in integrating dApps, and data availability issues for off-chain transactions, as seen previously in ZKsync. Sandor’s new position as co-founder of OpenZK can address ZK-Rollup’s present challenges and lay the ground for mass adoption and future growth of  ZK-Rollups as a whole.