Author: kairon.eth Source: mirror Translation: Shan Ouba, Golden Finance
I have written about the tendency of cultures to diverge and merge, and eventually form different cultures. In fact, these cultures are so different that you can put any diametrically opposed examples in the real world together and find common ancestors in 99% of cases.
Both conservatism and liberalism stem from core beliefs around innovation. The human gene pool, billions of nation-states, and even language itself are just endless iterations and branches. Similarly, most of the technologies that make up the current (and future) network are derived from the same core principles, and the problems that arise as new people use technology in new ways that suit their times and needs.
So, when I say that L2 is just a replica of the Internet, I don't mean it in a derogatory way. It’s the nature of things to find common ground when we explore what we think is new and unexplored territory.
When computers first became popular, there was a space race among academics to find the most efficient way to convert binary into human-perceivable commands. This era gave birth to the first programming languages. Since then, a new generation of computer scientists, technical employees, and garage nerds have tried to create their own versions on these prototype code systems to make their jobs easier, meet the needs of their employers, or just try their own cool experiments: like the first iteration of generative art, the first homemade computer operating system, and the first questions about privacy, scalability, distribution, and attribution of computer code.
I singled out these four issues in particular because they are exactly the problems we were trying to solve, just in a categorical way, rather than to meet the requirements of a specific company or person. But that’s a bit beyond my scope.
With the emergence of the Internet itself, these four issues have sparked most of the discussion. We have a channel where anyone’s code can belong to the world in an instant, without having to share floppy disks in envelopes like trading cards. With instant distribution comes the need to protect creators from accidental fame. For those who are not prepared, sudden attention can be dangerous in multiple ways. Code repositories can be stolen without proper authorization, misattributed dependencies can turn a weekend party into a year-long lawsuit, and for some people, making their name public can mean attracting the attention of some malicious netizens who share space with them.
In the second era, code took on a new face. People’s interest shifted from operating systems and motherboards to the web. This was truly a silent shift in the way people think about and use code, a shift that continues to this day. How many people do you know who write code in Assembly and React?
This new batch of programming languages focused on building the building blocks of the web on top of their predecessors. Layout markup languages gave rise to cascading style sheets, which then gave rise to animation and transition languages. It makes perfect sense to build a hammer before a saw. As a result, most of the original web-oriented programming languages are still relevant today, even PHP.
These waves are not unique. Similar to the first two waves, we see how languages pushed by Silicon Valley like Java, GO, React, C++, and Swift incentivize people to take advantage of existing thriving ecosystems. Anyone who has learned Swift thinks of the sweet perks of the App Store rather than what they want to build.
This is where we are at the moment. You learn to think about what benefits and ecosystems you want to take advantage of, even if they end up looking mostly similar. Sure, the syntax, specific benefits, or use cases may change a little, but it’s just as viable to make games in Python as it is in C++.
If we continue to explore what this means for the future of blockchain and L2, the answer is, and always will be: people will always find needs they want to prioritize, or feel their current solutions aren’t getting enough attention. Scalability, privacy, distribution, and attribution are deep, deep rabbit holes in themselves, and sometimes what’s best for one party can hinder another.
Like protocols, chains function to contain a set of behaviors. As we’ve seen in the past year of crypto adoption, a simple transaction hash can point to a message, an amount, a sentiment, or even part of your identity.
As Vitalik describes in the seminal article that inspired this one,even Ethereum is fragmenting into cultures and subcultures, each representing the original chain in their own way, but with their own unique needs and identities related to the type of use they want to give it.
Similarly, each chain will (most likely) continue to cultivate a community of people who support a specific use case, such as API calls for a social platform. A PGF widget that opens the door to OPs, or a degenerate trading platform with a social component. A lot of people seem to think apps are the future of crypto, but I prefer to think of them as the end state of already successful interoperable systems.
We don’t need a new type of infrastructure, we need better, more efficient ways to bring together tools from multiple ecosystems into the same app. The social space is leading the race, and DeFi is lagging in many ways. That’s because, as many of us have described, media always leads the way.
Just browse Lens or FC and you’ll find native solutions for carefully woven cross-chain experiences. Arweave is this, ARB stack is that, with a little ETH thrown in for added appeal. The culture in these ecosystems is unique enough to treat them like programming languages, as work tools with certain incentives, or a mission strong enough to overcome obstacles.
I can imagine a future where an application built on Ethereum uses Arbitrum for a specific benefit, and then ties another site feature to Optimism and another to Aleo L1. The future of L2 is synchronous and parallel. Tribalism and extremism that believes any ledger is sufficient for everything is a belief best left behind in a bear market.
Alex
Miyuki
Weiliang