New Blockchain Tech Promises To Ease Ethereum's Growing Pains

New technology promising to solve Ethereum's growing pains is gaining traction, increasing bets that some day most of the network's transactions might not actually take place on its own blockchain. From a report: For years slow speeds and high transaction fees have plagued the network underpinning the $550 billion cryptocurrency Ether -- home to the most popular blockchain applications. Its weaknesses have allowed new competitors such as Solana and Avalanche to gain ground. However, help from so-called Layer 2 technologies, or rollups, could be a solution. Digital ledgers like Ethereum are designed to slow down and become more expensive as their popularity increases. But these Layer 2 projects, many of which have only recently debuted, can effectively take transaction data off Ethereum, compress it and post it back onto the original chain for a fraction of the time and cost. So far the the user base is relatively small. But rapid growth is raising expectations that Ethereum will not only be able to ward off competition but that other blockchains might adopt similar scaling solutions. If the technology takes off, networks like Ethereum might only be directly used for very large transactions in the future, with the bulk of activity happening on Layer 2 networks.

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