Lei Yang: MegaETH achieves 55,000 transactions per second, Ethereum’s scaling strategy pivots back to layer one, and the challenges of layer two security

Table of Contents

Necessary factors

MegaETH leverages Ethereum as its premier blockchain execution atmosphere.
MegaETH stress assessments achieved 55,000 transactions per second.
Layer 2 options that replicate Layer 1 providers face safety challenges.
Ethereum’s strengths are essential to the whole good contract ecosystem.
Ethereum’s scaling technique is shifting from layer 2 to layer 1 enhancements.
Latest modifications in Ethereum’s roadmap symbolize a logical shift.
Regulatory stress is pushing some rollups towards centralization.
Ethereum might return to greater transaction prices as exercise returns to layer 1.
The present low transaction prices are as a result of motion of actions to Layer 2.
The power spent on Layer 2 growth is important to the evolution of Ethereum.
Layer 2 developed from sharding and allowed for variety and experimentation.
A zk-based optimistic anti-fraud system ensures transaction accuracy.

Visitor introduction

Lei Yang is the co-founder and CTO of MegaLabs, the workforce constructing MegaETH, a high-performance layer 2 of Ethereum with sub-10ms block occasions and 100,000 transactions per second. He earned his PhD in laptop science from MIT in 2024 for his analysis on blockchain consensus and networking that enabled end-to-end techniques with 80,000 transactions per second in 2018-2019.

Why MegaETH chooses Ethereum

Mega makes use of Ethereum as a result of it offers essentially the most performant blockchain execution atmosphere.

— Ray Yang
The rationale Mega makes use of Ethereum isn’t as a result of it is meh as you understand, however as a result of it permits them to construct essentially the most performant blockchain attainable.

— Ray Yang
MegaETH achieved 55,000 transactions per second throughout mainnet stress testing.
We ran a stress check on mainnet, so everybody might check operating 55,000 transactions per second.

— Ray Yang
The stress check demonstrated MegaETH’s capacity to deal with massive volumes of transactions.
We checked out it and it was actually superb…it trains extraordinarily quick, has unbelievable compute, and might deal with loopy ranges of exercise.

— Ray Yang
MegaETH’s efficiency metrics are extremely dependable because the mainnet atmosphere intently emulates real-world launch situations.
Flip the change and also you’re operating mainnet. It is like having the very same server, similar IP deal with, similar settings, similar administration key.

— Ray Yang

Evolution of Ethereum’s scaling technique

Ethereum’s scaling technique is shifting from counting on Layer 2 to enhancing Layer 1 capabilities.
The unique model of Imaginative and prescient not works. Ethereum itself must scale in its unique model. Mainly, we had been offloading plenty of this to l two, however now that l one is scaling, we do not want that anymore.

— Ray Yang
Latest modifications in Ethereum’s roadmap symbolize a logical pivot relatively than a price pivot.
I consider this as a pivot relatively than a values pivot, however I exploit the phrase pivot from the attitude of the roadmap itself, when it comes to what was initially envisioned within the rollup-centric roadmap and the place it’s now.

— Ray Yang
The transfer to extra centralized options with some rollups is an comprehensible, though unlucky, response to regulatory pressures.
In a way, I believe it is a unhappy actuality much like Moloch’s victory. To be sincere, everybody has completely different incentives…Within the stage 1 rollup, they stated they did not wish to be within the stage 2 level hole as a result of they had been in a regulatory atmosphere that most popular to be extra centralized.

— Ray Yang
As exercise returns to Layer 1, Ethereum will finally return to greater transaction prices.
I believe it’s kind of of an overreaction to say Ethereum would not want one other 2…we’ll quickly be again to a world the place File 1 has $200 transactions.

— Ray Yang

Function of Layer 2 Options

Constructing a Layer 2 that replicates a Layer 1 service is technically uninteresting and introduces safety points.
Attempting to construct and replicate the precise primitives supplied by Layer 1 is fairly uninteresting… It is really very troublesome to construct a safe Layer 2, and if all you need for Layer 2 is to undertake Ethereum’s safety out of the field, I believe you are higher off constructing Layer 1.

— Ray Yang
The power spent growing the Layer 2 roadmap isn’t wasted, it’s important to Ethereum’s evolution.
I actually do not assume the power we spent on this board is wasted. I believe Mega is feasible as a result of Ethereum has been following this Layer 2-centric roadmap for a number of years.

— Ray Yang
Layer 2 developed from the idea of sharding and enabled variety and experimentation within the Ethereum ecosystem.
The unique thought was that Ethereum would run and function all of the shards. Why not delegate it to a number of groups to make sure variety, competitors and experimentation?

— Ray Yang
Layer 2 options embody mechanisms to make sure censorship resistance and consumer termination choices.
First, Layer 2 doesn’t censor customers. Which means if a consumer’s transaction is maliciously excluded from Layer 2, they will at all times return to Layer 1 and ship the connection there, forcing the Layer 2 sequence to incorporate the connection.

— Ray Yang

Financial sustainability in blockchain

Chain charges are usually not a viable enterprise mannequin for Mega $ETH.
I do not assume it is cool that you simply guys can do 11,000,000,000 transactions per second. I do not assume you guys are going to achieve sustained ranges of 11,000,000,000 natural transactions per second anytime quickly.

— Ray Yang
The financial sustainability of blockchain techniques should prioritize consumer accessibility over short-term earnings from charges.
I believe that is really a short-term thought as a result of the way in which Mega grows is by permitting everybody to return and use my ID for as low-cost as humanly attainable.

— Ray Yang
Present approaches to blockchain income era have to evolve past merely issuing tokens.
We have to construct one thing like some type of precise enterprise mannequin, however no less than we obtained to stablecoins earlier than it turned what it’s now.

— Ray Yang
The mechanism for monetizing stablecoins on the Mageve platform permits for reinvestment on the chain with out harming finish customers.
What we principally stated is that when you have one thing like this native secure coin usdm, and your software makes use of usdm, you get a tibo yield on that proper, and that goes into Maggie Eve’s steadiness sheet…

— Ray Yang

The way forward for rollups and governance

Stage 2 rollup requires a dedication to immutability of governance logic, which comes with important dangers.
Stage 2 is principally saying that decommissioning the Safety Council code is for lifetime immutability…principally saying that one a part of the design of the Layer 2 rollup will probably be completely mounted for the lifetime of Ethereum, the lifetime of the universe.

— Ray Yang
Reaching Stage 2 of the rollup might take longer than beforehand anticipated, probably exceeding two years.
I believe it’s irresponsible to assert that we’ll attain the second stage inside a yr, and even inside two years.

— Ray Yang
Trusting the Safety Council in step one might result in potential abuses of energy.
We should additionally belief that the Safety Council doesn’t intend to abuse its energy. As a result of I believe inside a yr we’ll be…actually in Stage 1, however really, insisting on labeling one thing like Mega Ether as Stage 1 might be not a great factor.

— Ray Yang
AI might play a key function in validating the accuracy of software program, which is important to reaching the second stage.
I believe what AI is finest at is proving issues which might be troublesome to create however straightforward to confirm: software program code.

— Ray Yang

Impression of AI on blockchain

The following billion customers of blockchain expertise may very well be AI brokers.
One other chance, which has not too long ago come to my consideration, is that the subsequent billion customers may very well be AI brokers.

— Ray Yang
The poor consumer expertise of cryptocurrencies for people may very well profit software program brokers.
In the event you imagine that a part of the explanation we do not undertake extra cryptocurrencies is as a result of the UX is horrible…all of the UX issues we’ve got are literally benefits for small software program brokers.

— Ray Yang
We have to begin prioritizing agent customers in our blockchain expertise.
Possibly we have to actually begin prioritizing agent customers in a few of our blockchain experiences.

— Ray Yang
Brokers have limitless power to strive completely different transaction paths, in contrast to people who quit after a number of tries.
To help the brokers in want…we’d like block area that’s low-cost sufficient for brokers to experiment and error…brokers have monumental quantities of power…people do not simply experiment.

— Ray Yang

The function of proximity markets in blockchain

Ethereum’s fine-grained auctions in block order are impractical in techniques with very quick block spacing.
The elemental drawback for us is that the block spacing may be very small. In our case, the block interval is 10ms, so operating an public sale at this type of nice granularity is totally unworkable.

— Ray Yang
We imagine that shut market fashions are simpler than micro auctions on the subject of ordering trades.
What we’re attempting to realize is…we name it a proximity market…operating these choices at such intervals that lots of people resolve on it.

— Ray Yang
Working with a sequencer permits optimized buying and selling algorithms to function with minimal delay.
You will have seats to co-locate together with your sequencer, and as soon as that is carried out, you possibly can choose the algorithms you wish to run and run them on these seats, that are principally digital machines proper subsequent to your sequencer, so the quote you get out of your cloud supplier is all the way down to 1ms…

— Ray Yang
Incentive buildings ought to encourage high-frequency merchants to be bodily situated close to sequencers to extend market liquidity.
The rationale for setting the block interval to 10 ms is to create an environment friendly and extremely liquid market. Because the market wants to return to the sequencer, I believe that is each an incentive construction and a extra sensible option to make environment friendly precedence assignments when buying and selling in real-time.

— Ray Yang

MegaETH innovation promotion technique

mega $ETH‘s strategy of cultivating its personal app ecosystem is important to keep away from redundancy between chains.
You’ll be able to’t get right into a state of affairs the place you’ve got a bunch of repetitive functions that exist on each different chain. What is the level of spending the final three years constructing this if there’s actually nothing new about this prepare?

— Ray Yang
mega $ETH is actively looking for founders to construct their very own functions to strengthen our ecosystem.
All we did was principally simply discover founders and begin convincing them to construct one thing that was frankly cool.

— Ray Yang
There’s a big mind drain within the crypto business, with many potential founders leaving for AI attributable to poor consumer expertise.
I believe plenty of founders who might have constructed nice apps could not do it in earlier cycles as a result of their UX was garbage, and so they simply let AI do it on this cycle.

— Ray Yang
If we stay trusted and impartial and don’t actively encourage growth, we threat leaving new functions undeveloped.
What I am extra afraid of is that we’ll run out of builders… We will really be extremely impartial. In the event you try this, you will not be capable to run any extra apps.

— Ray Yang

The way forward for token distribution and possession

The present strategy to token distribution out there is flawed and unfair.
This is a matter we noticed, and we all know that cryptocurrencies wish to be distinctive, so we thought it wasn’t excellent.

— Ray Yang
Worth discovery is shifting from public markets to personal markets, resulting in unequal entry for public individuals.
I believe that was a fairly good thing… plenty of value discovery moved into personal markets, and consequently, as you understand, public individuals did not essentially have equal entry to belongings.

— Ray Yang
Conventional possession fashions in expertise don’t apply to cryptocurrencies, the place customers wish to be the homeowners of the functions they use.
I believe it is completely nice that it isn’t precisely the case with cryptocurrencies, the place folks have traditionally wished to be the homeowners of the functions I exploit, but it surely simply felt very unfair.

— Ray Yang
The strategy of permitting customers to take part in possession has confirmed profitable, as evidenced by excessive participation charges in funding rounds.
We principally simply doubled down on that idea…80% of Echo customers tried to hitch…we ended up oversubscribed by about 25x.

— Ray Yang