Are Layer Two Fees Still Too High? Vitalik Buterin Thinks So

Vitalik Buterin

  • An Ethereum supporter has recently brought attention to the L2 networks and their fees.
  • Ethereum co-founder Buterin highlights that L2 fees should not be over $0.05. 
  • The overall TVL has seen a plunge of approximately 18% during the month of April. 

Ryan Sean Adams, the Ethereum supporter, and industry analyst, recently posted a Tweet with a screenshot of the significant layer two networks and their fees on May 3. 

And it highlighted the highest to be Arbitrum One to send ETH, which was $0.85 and $1.19 for a token swap. At the same time, the one with the least was the Metis Network which was at $0.02 to send ETH and $0.15 for a token swap. 

And to this came the Ethereum co-founder’s Tweet in reply. Viatlik Buterin highlighted that it needs to get below $0.05 to be truly accepted, in his opinion. But they are definitely making great progress, and proto-dankshading would be enough to get them there for a while. Furthermore, he repeated his opinion that the internet of money should not cost 5 cents per transaction. 

Introduced by Vitalik Buterin back in February with EIP 4844, Photo-Dankshading is a way to enhance the mechanism of Ethereum Consensus Layer sharding. And this introduction comes with a new kind of transaction called a blob-carrying transaction, which carries extra data not accessed by the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). 

L2fees highlights that the cost of sending ETH on the significant layer two platforms is around $0.02 to $1.96. 

Ethereum’s transaction cost has always been a topic of discussion. Additionally, the average gas fees surged by over $200, which was the all-time high that it recorded on May 1. This happened when Yuga Labs rolled out its NFT collection, which also displeased the community. 

Furthermore, according to data by the L2Beat layer-two tracker, the total value locked (TVL) among all the layer two networks has witnessed a plunge to just more than $6 Billion. Whereas at the start of April, it was at $7.4 Billion. Arbitrum is the most prominent leader, accounting for 57% of that TVL; ironically, it is among the most expensive L2 networks to use. 

Many of the networks are yet so expensive, and the cryptocurrency market is growing by leaps and bounds now. More and more folks and entities are turning their heads towards it, and it might become a need for these networks to try to lower their costs as the competition is likely to increase in the future. 

Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2022/05/04/are-layer-two-fees-still-too-high-vitalik-buterin-thinks-so/