Layer 1 Driven Layer 2 Development

This use-case optimised L2 approach can only succeed if the roadmap is effectively dictated by the Layer 1 community, rather than by a haphazard collection of independent L2s. A unified and strategic vision ensures that all L2 solutions are developed cohesively, aligning with the overarching goals and standards of the entire ecosystem. This avoids the pitfalls of disjointed and competing L2 interests, which can lead to fragmentation, inefficiencies, and resource wastage. By having a unified roadmap, Glue ensures that all L2s work synergistically towards common objectives, fostering innovation, collaboration, and seamless integration. This strategic coherence is essential for maintaining the integrity, scalability, and performance of the blockchain ecosystem, ensuring that every component works in harmony to deliver a superior user experience.

Flexibility and Adaptability

The use-case optimised model provides the flexibility to integrate new technologies and features tailored to specific applications. This adaptability is crucial in a rapidly evolving technological landscape, ensuring that Glue remains at the forefront of blockchain innovation. To further illustrate:

The system at an initial state of t0

Formula 3: The total flexibility and adaptability of the system, at the initial time of t0. The system total also includes the flexibility and adaptability of the Layer 1.

To reflect ease of introducing a new use-case optimised L2 and the relative difficulty of upgrading existing L2s, the variable D is introduced. Where D=0 means no difficulty and D=1 means maximum difficulty.

Formula 4: Ease of introducing new L2. The difficulty of introducing new L2s is near zero.

Formula 5: Difficulty of upgrading existing L2s. This is greater than zero but still feasible.

With an addition of a new use-case optimised L2 to the system in the future at t1:

Formula 6: The addition of a new use-case optimised L2. Introducing a new use-case optimised L2 has near-zero difficulty, so its contribution to the total flexibility and adaptability is fully added.

With and upgrade to a specific L2 that already exists in the system at t2:

Formula 7: The upgrade to a use-case optimised L2. Upgrading an existing L2 is more challenging, so its contribution is scaled. Indicating a proportional effect based on the difficulty.

By summing these core components together, the total adaptability and flexibility of the system is captured, considering the contributions from existing L2 solutions, new L2 solutions, and upgrades to existing L2s and their associated difficulty. This integrated formula provides a representation of the system's capacity to respond to changes and have a high level of flexibility and adaptability.

Strategic Integration

The adoption of a use-case optimised model represents a deliberate and informed choice to transcend the traditionally existing limitations. Substrate enables the precise customisation of blockchain components, allowing Glue to implement specialised modules that cater to the unique demands of each L2. This integration ensures that the entire ecosystem operates harmoniously. By avoiding the pitfalls of a one-size-fits-all approach, the use-case optimised model ensures that resources are allocated efficiently. There is no need to have a dApp that doesn’t need extremely high censorship resistance to live on an L2 that has 100,000 validators, as it slows it down and makes it tremendously more expensive. The same goes for doing an asset transfer on a Turing complete EVM chain, which causes massive overheads instead of just using an asset transfer L2 that does not have smart contract capabilities at all.

Figure 5: Example of censorship resistance on a generic one-size-fits-all approach. In this example, dApp 1 is well optimised for this generic L2. However, this generic L2 has higher censorship resistance than the dApp2 requires, whilst not having enough for dApp3. This inconsistency results in suboptimal user and developer experience.

Figure 6: Example of block finality on a generic one-size-fits-all approach. In this example, the block finality is optimised for the requirements of dApp2, whilst being too fast for dApp1 and too slow for dApp3’s use cases.

Figure 7: Efficiency in the Use-Case Optimised Model: Each Layer 2 solution is provisioned with tailored optimisations to minimise waste and maximise performance, ensuring optimal operation for diverse applications. In this example, a dApp that requires the highest possible censorship resistance can use use-case optimised L22, whilst a dApp that requires fast transactions and block finality, such as peer-to-peer payments can use the use-case optimised L23. Since there is seamless communication between all the use-case optimised L2s, a dApp can use multiple L2s in conjunction for maximum optimisation and efficiency.

In cases where a use-case optimised L2 becomes extremely popular and experiences high demand, a new and more optimised L2 can be developed and released to better meet the growing demand.

Figure 8: In this example, if the use-case optimised L23 sees further demand, a new use-case optimised L2, L24, can be developed and released with no interruptions to any of the other L2s. This is an example of Glue’s development flexibility and agility.

Use-Case Optimised L2 Model: An Advanced Form of Sharding

The use-case optimised L2 model can be seen as a more sophisticated and advanced version of sharding. Traditional sharding divides the blockchain into smaller, manageable pieces or "shards," each capable of processing transactions independently to improve scalability and throughput. However, the use-case optimised L2 model takes this concept further by not just splitting the blockchain for efficiency but by tailoring each "shard" or Layer 2 to specific use case needs. This concept can be conceptualised as:

Formula 8: Traditional Sharding. Where Tshard is the throughput of the i-th shard, and 𝑛 is the number of shards.

Formula 9: Use-Case Optimised L2 Model. Where TL2 is the throughput of the i-th L2 chain, EL2 is the efficiency gain from optimisation for a specific use-case and 𝑛 is the number of L2 chains.

This ensures that each L2 is optimised for the particular demands of its use case, whether it be finance, gaming, or asset transfers. This advanced approach not only enhances performance and scalability but also allows for more specialised functionality, surpassing the generalised benefits of traditional sharding. By integrating these specialised L2 solutions seamlessly with Layer 1, and even more importantly with each other, Glue achieves a level of efficiency and customisation that traditional sharding models cannot match.