polynya Profile picture
17 Nov, 7 tweets, 2 min read
Web3 is a positive sum game. Solana's technology has abysmal scalability, capable of addressing <1% of TAM long term. The notion of a single database addressing much of the global audience is ludicrous in web2, and a single ledger doing the same is no different with web3.

1/6
I welcome more centralized solutions like Solana or Polygon PoS to onboard the surplus demand in the short term here & now. However, Polygon has a much more ambitious and future-leaning roadmap than Solana with ZKRs, scaling well beyond what Solana can ever dream of.

2/6
Solana's bizdev and marketing teams have done a phenomenal job, and the audience they onboard till StarkNet, zkSync 2.0 and Polygon Hermez/Miden mature will be well earned. But this is <<1% of where web3 is headed long term. Remember, a single ZKR can outscale Solana.

3/6
In the future, we're looking at advanced techniques like internal pre-consensus sharding, where a single ZKR can do >100x scale of Solana alone, and resolve to a single composable state with a single proof. And, there will be thousands of these ZKRs working in tandem!

4/6
Fortunately, Solana has paths forward to play in the brave new world of specialized blockchains, like Polygon, Tezos & Ethereum are demonstrating. They just have to accept their tech is primitive & archaic and switch to working on advanced tech for the long term.

5/6
Finally, as a reminder, these "Ethereum vs Solana" type arguments are silly and myopic. It's going to be all about E, S & D layers, and thousands of projects will need to work together in tandem across these spheres to get web3 to global ubiquity.

Fin

Addendum: Since I say "long term" a lot, let me quantify that by saying I have a 5-10 year horizon on where blockchains are headed. If you are focused on the short term, that's fine, and much of what I say will not be of interest to you.

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More from @epolynya

20 Nov
One of the most underappreciated benefit of rollups vs high-TPS L1s is efficiency of liveness, censorship resistance and finality. In the latter, the consensus protocols have to offer permanent CR, L, and safety. In rollups, you only need ephemeral CR, L for a few minutes.

1/8
ORs generally settle every couple of minutes, SNARK rollups like Loopring ~12 minutes, STARK rollups like dYdX ~1 hour. It could be longer if they are less active, but as activity ramps up and the tech matures, I'd expect these times to decrease rapidly, eventually few sec.

2/8
Rollups that want to maximize ephemeral CR & L, can run proof-of-stake consensus just like their MC ancestors. However, they only need to do this for a few minutes instead of forever! As a result, they can be far more efficient. Which also enables more rapid finality.

3/8
Read 8 tweets
14 Nov
General CR is same as settlement layer - you can exit from there.

Ephemeral CR (minutes, potentially seconds in the future) is as decentralized as sequencers are. Can even run PoS consensus with many validators for max CR, at the cost of efficiency.
I imagine most ZKRs will take the middle ground, by decentralizing their sequencers and provers just enough for the ephemeral CR. Just needs CR for a few minutes till verified on settlement layer. Nothing stops a ZKR from going all out with PoS BFT CR, but this is v. inefficient.
However, on the other hand, some may choose to keep their sequencers centralized in specific cases for max efficiency & DDoS resistance. There's no real incentive for a centralized sequencer to censor - they'll just lose business to competitors.

Read 5 tweets
13 Nov
Understandably, the rhetoric is still entirely monolithic blockchain (L1) centric, presumably a reflection of people's bags - they don't want progress.

The real question is which projects are best specialized in these categories?

- Execution
- Settlement
- Data availability
I generally stick to talking about the specialized execution layers, i.e. rollups/validiums/volitions, but the truth is all three are interlinked and as long as people continue to have monolithic-centric biases the discussion is stifled. Let's start thinking in E, S and DA terms.
Example of why monolithic/L1-centric thinking is plain wrong. E, S and DA can be different. The correct comparisons should be E vs E, S vs S, DA vs DA; not L1 vs L1.

Read 4 tweets
5 Nov
The magic of validity rollups: the more activity there is, cheaper it gets. Some quick estimates:

~12,000 TPS dYdX-type transactions on Ethereum possible today.
~250,000 TPS with V1 data shards (~2023).
4 million TPS with optimized data shards.
~100 million TPS by ~2030.
Yes - that's dYdX-type complex derivative trade transactions on validity rollups settling on Ethereum alone. These are v. conservative worst-case estimates not considering inevitable improvements in tech, further breakthroughs, data compression optimizations, non-Ethereum DA etc.
Circling back to dYdX - proof verification is still ~80% of the cost, so there's enormous headroom for growth and costs will plummet as activity rises. Eventually, each batch can be a million transactions & verif. cost will be negligible. We're at the very peak of the iceberg.
Read 5 tweets
4 Nov
Spotted on StarkNet's new webpage. Volition has to be the single most underrated innovation in crypto. "L1 vs L1" debates are deemed irrelevant & pointless, when a single composable platform can give you the best of all worlds on a per-user, per-app or per-transaction level.
Imagine a volition which settles proofs on the most robust settlement layer, and DA across multiple solutions. So, let's say, for example, StarkNet verifies on Ethereum, but has Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot and others as DA options. You can choose your solution as you please.
Here's the magical bit - whichever DA option you select, it'll be 100x cheaper and more secure than using those directly! It's like having Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot parachains all on a single composable smart contract platform - but better than using any of them individually!
Read 6 tweets
3 Nov
A common fallacy by non-sharded monolithic chain fans is "will get more decentralized & secure over time". But this is nonsense - they will either have to give up "TPS", or decentralized & secure chains will catch up to them. Moore's/Nielsen's Laws apply to the entire world.
Rollups & data shards benefit even more over time. E.g. Rollups will benefit from CPU/GPU & SSD/RAM advances, data shards will benefit from bandwidth improvements, and both will compound on top of each other. Not to mention the dramatic gains with GPU/FPGA provers.
Oh, and then there's the small matter that rollups didn't trade off decentralization & security to begin with. But I don't discuss that because I don't want to deal with the standard cop-out "but people don't care...". So, my approach is simply rollups + data shards = max "TPS".
Read 4 tweets

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