30s Summary

Gnosis founder Martin Köppelmann has proposed using 128 “native rollups” to prevent Ethereum from becoming irrelevant by safeguarding it from takeover by big corporations. Native rollups, which adhere to Ethereum’s security standards, would help address some of Ethereum’s issues including liquidity and fragmentation. Köppelmann’s suggestion has been well-received, although Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams suggested a “middle ground” using a sequencer agnostic L2 proving system. Anoma co-founder Adrian Brink cautioned that rollup distinctions could be a marketing tactic.

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Martin Köppelmannn, the guy who founded Gnosis, thinks that using 128 “native rollups” could keep Ethereum from being taken over by big corporations and becoming irrelevant.

So, what’s a native rollup? It’s a type of network that matches Ethereum’s security standards. This means they’re trustworthy, can’t be censored, and share the same economic principles as Ethereum.

There are other types of rollups, like “centralized” rollups and “based rollups,” but native rollups provide the same security and flexibility as Ethereum. They would be created and managed by Ethereum’s main developers and would pay all their fees back to Ethereum’s main network.

Köppelmannn thinks that using a lot of these native rollups could solve a few problems Ethereum is dealing with right now, like a lack of liquidity and a lot of fragmentation. It would also take Ethereum back to its original structure, which it gave up for rollups.

The Bankless podcasters, Ryan Adams and David Hoffman, spoke positively about the idea, saying it would only add to Ethereum and would improve it. But Uniswap CEO Hayden Adams suggested a “middle ground” approach, which would use a sequencer agnostic L2 proving system.

Adrian Brink, a co-founder of the blockchain firm Anoma, thinks the distinction between native and based rollups is mainly a marketing ploy. He said there’s no official computer science term for any type of rollup. He explained that “based” just means the rollup is sequenced by the base layer, while “native” means there’s a native opcode to verify the rollup’s execution.

Köppelmannn’s company Gnosis prioritizes decentralization in Ethereum infrastructure. It also forms the groundwork that much of the Ethereum ecosystem is built on. Köppelmannn took the stage at DevCon in Thailand last week, wearing a Tornado Cash T-shirt, and argued that Ethereum needs to distance itself from centralized layer-2 rollups and instead use its own network of zk-proven networks that match Ethereum’s high standards.

Köppelmannn said that centralized layer-2 networks, like Base, control how much profit they make, which means their intentions might be different than what’s best for Ethereum all the time.

He proposed creating 128 equal and interoperable native rollups on Ethereum. He said these networks would interact well with Ethereum’s main network, fulfilling Ethereum’s early promise of providing sharding using L2 technology.

Brink partly agreed with Köppelmann, saying that Ethereum should try to distance itself from privately owned ecosystems in the long term. Brink said that neither centralized nor based are perfect solutions for Ethereum, but “native rollups are definitely an improvement from the more centralized L2 status quo.”

Köppelmann said that Base and other L2 networks claim to share the same security features as Ethereum, but he argued that funds can be stolen in several ways on these networks, which wouldn’t be possible with Ethereum.

Brink agrees that while native rollups would make it easier for developers to deploy, he doesn’t consider them a true scaling solution. This is because the amount of data that needs to be posted on-chain still increases with the amount of usage. He suggests exploring Plasma-like constructions, using advanced ZK tech.

All in all, Brink stresses the importance of focusing on “generalized intents”—a single standard that can be shared and understood by all users and apps across the ecosystem—and do away with fragmentation that currently beleaguers Ethereum.