A portion of the Ethereum community is pressuring the Ethereum Foundation to make decisions that may \u201cbreak the entire social fabric\u201d of the smart contract network by restricting Ethereum’s layer-2 (L2) networks, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said.<\/p>\n
Speaking during a March 28 episode of Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction<\/a> show on X, the Polygon founder said that he has only seen this type of pressure and anti-L2 rhetoric during the current market cycle amid suppressed price action for Ether<\/a> (ETH<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody understands that if Ethereum doesn\u2019t survive, the layer-2s won\u2019t survive,\u201d Nailwal said, adding:<\/p>\n “The Ethereum community should not pressure the developers enough \u2014 I should not be able to pressure the developers enough \u2014 for price movements and all that, they may end up making a decision that completely breaks the social fabric of Ethereum.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Polygon co-founder praised Vitalik Buterin\u2019s leadership and his more active role in the Ethereum Foundation<\/a>, saying he has been the biggest force in keeping Ethereum’s ecosystem cohesive.<\/p>\n Nailwal characterized Buterin as the \u201cDNA” of the network that has attracted many talented developers over the years who are building layers on top of the Ethereum base layer.<\/p>\n The total value secured across Ethereum\u2019s scaling solutions. Source: <\/em>L2Beat<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Related: <\/strong><\/em>Getting crypto out of the \u2018AOL era\u2019 \u2014 Sandeep Nailwal<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n According to Nailwal, the layer-1 vs layer-2 dichotomy is the wrong way to think about blockchain networks.<\/p>\n The Polygon founder defined only two settlement layers in all of crypto, Bitcoin and Ethereum, with all other crypto networks being execution layers.<\/p>\n In the future, almost every application will have its own blockchain<\/a> to avoid paying gas fees and will post final transactions to one of these settlement layers, Nailwal said.<\/p>\n Ethereum’s base layer will benefit from this explosion of execution layers, accruing value from these final settlements and promoting the long-term growth of the ecosystem, which will one day be seamlessly interoperable.<\/p>\n Ethereum base layer fees drop following the Dencun upgrade. Source: <\/em>The Tie Terminal<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n Critics of Ethereum’s execution layers say that the scaling networks are currently cannibalizing the base layer, which culminated in a 99% drop in Ethereum L1 revenue<\/a> by September 2024.<\/p>\n Nailwal concluded that due to these differences between settlement and execution layers, no other crypto network is real competition for Ethereum except the Bitcoin network.<\/p>\n However, the only way the Bitcoin network could be a threat to Ethereum is if it adopted more advanced scripting options that give it reliable, smart contract functionality like Ethereum, Nailwal said.<\/p>\nSettlement layers vs execution layers<\/h2>\n