‘Ethereum Has Massive Problems’: Justin Bons Sounds Alarm

Justin Bons, the founder and CIO at Cyber Capital, has some pretty serious concerns about how Ethereum is handling scaling right now. In a recent social media rant, Bons argues that focusing on Layer 2 scaling solutions like Arbitrum has led to fragmentation, which is bad for the user experience and divides social capital.

Developers are now more focused on pursuing L2 grant programs than on attracting users, which has shifted priorities, he believes. As a result, some incentives have gone strange, and venture capitalists, developers and influencers are more focused on their L2 solutions than on Ethereum itself.

The real solution is in the scaling of Ethereum L1, but leadership of the blockchain has been reluctant to adopt it, says Bons. He points out that moving toward this direction could have a big impact on equity and token prices of sidechains, since these depend on Ethereum not scaling at the base layer.

Ethereum has massive problems:

“L2 scaling” has led to fragmentation, ruining UX & dividing social capital

DAPs now chase L2 grant programs instead of users…

ETH VCs, devs & influencers are invested in their L2 winning, not ETH! These are all seriously perverse incentives!

— Justin Bons (@Justin_Bons) August 8, 2024

Buterin disagrees

The influencer, however, admits that without L2s, Ethereum’s competitors might have grabbed more of the market and users. On the other hand, he also says that if the scaling happened at the base layer to meet demand, the impact of those competitors would have been much smaller.

These comments from Bons come at a time when Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin has expressed strong support for Layer-2 solutions. Buterin believes that cross-L2 interoperability challenges will soon be resolved, which will lead to a smoother user experience across the network.

He continues to praise projects like Arbitrum and Optimism for their advancements and anticipates further progress with the introduction of zk-EVM rollups.

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