During an interview with the crypto news publication Cointelegraph, Kenny Li, the co-founder of Ethereum-based (ETH) layer-2 “modular” blockchain Manta Pacific (MANTA), warned that only a few of the Layer-2 scaling networks currently in existence will still be around in five years.
The chief operating officer of Manta claims the road to the future is only properly paved for modular blockchains like itself, Celestia (TIA), and Cosmos (ATOM).
According to data sourced by Ethereum analytics and research website L2Beat, there are currently 44 L2 networks active on the Ethereum blockchain. Together, they boast a combined total value locked (TVL) of $36.92 billion.
Arbitrum (ARB) leads the chart with $15.46 billion in TVL, while Manta (MANTA) is in fourth place with a TVL of $2.1 billion.
MANTA Co-Founder Likens Layer-2 Scaling Networks to Forks of Bitcoin and Ethereum
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Li supported his statement by arguing that the new wave of L2s on Ethereum is following the same path as hard forks of Bitcoin and Ethereum in the past, which failed to make an impact in the market.
Kenny explained that these “forks” set out with the intention of creating something better than the original blockchain by adopting an existing technology and making minor changes to it.
“Fast forward to 2024, it’s just Bitcoin” and there are no other Bitcoin fork networks with any comparable metrics or community participation to the original cryptocurrency, he explained.
Bitcoin Cash (BSV) and Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) are two well-known hard forks of Bitcoin (BTC) that failed to catch on.
He highlighted that the same thing played out with Ethereum in 2016 when new hard forks like EOS and NEO attempted to position themselves as “Ethereum killers” by slightly tweaking the original ecosystem and offering users alternative EVM and Virtual Machine environments.
Li believes that the main issue with Bitcoin and Ethereum forks was that they were all built “monolithically”, meaning they don’t allow for the quick integration and adoption of the latest technologies in blockchain that showed up.
Monolithic blockchains are networks where all the primary tasks, such as execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability, are carried out on a single layer of closely interconnected chains.
In comparison, Modular blockchains export their primary tasks to external protocols, which proponents say offers greater efficiency and scalability to the mainnet.
Li describes Manta, which launched its mainnet on January 18, as the “first and largest” modular Layer-2 blockchain on Ethereum. It employs Optimism’s OP stack and Celestia’s data availability protocol to perform transactions.
However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin defines this mechanism as a “Validium” rather than a genuine L2.
Solana Executive Calls the Distinction Between Monolithic and Modular Blockchains a Marketing Ploy
However, critics of this viewpoint say the term is simply a marketing stunt and that the success of a blockchain has nothing to do with its approach to development and scalability.
Austin Federa, head of strategy at the Solana Foundation, is one of them. He noted that it was Celestia (TIA) that created a distinction between modular and monolithic blockchains, and it is not a natural distinction.
“There’s nothing organic about it,” he implied.
Federa says there is no such thing as a modular or monolithic blockchain ecosystem. He likened it to the ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ terminologies, which are used to “put forward a certain narrative that people want to talk about”.
He said that both were simply different software architecture choices that are not really that different from each other at the end of the day.
Meanwhile, Li went on to suggest that Manta is taking a rather “modular” approach, which means the network will essentially be able to “plug and play” different technologies that are available at different times so that it can continue to adapt to the ever-changing demands of the market.
At the time of writing, Manta Pacific (MANTA) is trading at $3.35 – up 12.4% in the last 24 hours.
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