Best Layer 2 Protocols

Meter is a high performance infrastructure that allows smart contracts to scale and travel seamlessly through heterogeneous blockchain networks. Meter is a Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchain protocol. The Meter system consists of two tokens: MTRG, the governance token (eMTRG is the ERC20 version), and MTR, the low-volatility currency token. Financial assets should flow freely among blockchains. Meter’s HotStuff-based consensus allows 1000s of validator nodes, making Meter the most decentralized Layer 2 for Ethereum. Meter processes thousands of transactions per second and transactions are confirmed almost instantly. Meter Passport allows assets and smart contracts travel and communicate across heterogeneous blockchains for the best price, liquidity and yield. Meter is an Ethereum Compatible with unique enhancements. Unlike other Layer 2, DEXes build on Meter are front running/MEV resistant, fast and uncensorable.

Loopring is an open protocol for building scalable non-custodial exchanges on Ethereum. Leveraging zero-knowledge proofs (zkRollup), it allows for high performance trading (high throughput, low settlement cost), without sacrificing Ethereum-level security guarantees. Users always maintain 100% control of their assets throughout the trade lifecycle. You can trade on Loopring to test it out. Loopring is an open-sourced, audited, and non-custodial exchange protocol, which means nobody in the Loopring ecosystem needs to trust others. Cryptoassets are always under users' own control, with 100% Ethereum-level security guarantees. Loopring powers highly scalable decentralized exchanges by batch-processing thousands of requests off-chain, with verifiably correct execution via ZKPs. The performance of underlying blockchains is no longer the bottleneck. Loopring performs most operations, including order-matching and trade settlement, off the Ethereum blockchain.

Polkadot is a blockchain network being built to enable Web 3.0, a decentralized and fair internet where users control their own data and markets prosper from network efficiency and security. Polkadot was founded in 2016 by Gavin Wood, former Co-Founder and CTO of Ethereum. Polkadot’s technology addresses the major issues that have stymied blockchain adoption in recent years. Polkadot’s software development toolkit, Substrate, created by Parity Technologies, makes it easy for blockchain developers to build their own custom, fit-for-use blockchains. Polkadot also enables multiple blockchains to communicate between each other, allows for easy upgradeability, and introduces “shared security”, a plug-and-play network security model that allows developers to focus on the technology and avoid spending time and resources recruiting a set of operators to run a new blockchain.

The Raiden Network is an off-chain scaling solution, enabling near-instant, low-fee and scalable payments. It’s complementary to the Ethereum blockchain and works with any ERC20 compatible token. The Raiden project is work in progress. Its goal is to research state channel technology, define protocols and develop reference implementations. The Raiden Network is an infrastructure layer on top of the Ethereum blockchain. While the basic idea is simple, the underlying protocol is quite complex and the implementation non-trivial. Nonetheless the technicalities can be abstracted away, such that developers can interface with a rather simple API to build scalable decentralized applications based on the Raiden Network. The basic idea of the Raiden Network is to avoid the blockchain consensus bottleneck. This is done by leveraging a network of payment channels which allow to securely transfer value off-chain, i.e without involving the blockchain for every transfer.

Truebit is a blockchain enhancement which enables smart contracts to securely perform complex computations in standard programming languages at reduced gas costs. While smart contracts can perform small computations correctly, large computation tasks pose security risks for blockchains. Truebit counteracts this shortcoming via a trustless, retrofitting oracle which correctly performs computational tasks. Any smart contract can issue a computation task to this oracle in the form of WebAssembly bytecode, while anonymous “miners” receive rewards for correctly solving the task. The oracle’s protocol guarantees correctness in two layers: a unanimous consensus layer where anyone can object to faulty solutions, and an on-chain mechanism which incentivizes participation and ensures fair remuneration. These components formally manifest themselves through a combination of novel, off-chain architecture and on-chain smart contracts.

Starknet is a permissionless decentralized ZK-Rollup operating as an L2 network over Ethereum, where any dApp can achieve unlimited scale for its computation, without compromising Ethereum's composability and security. Starknet achieves scale, while preserving the security of L1 Ethereum by producing STARK proofs off-chain, and verifying those proofs on-chain. On Starknet, developers can easily deploy any business logic using Starknet Contracts. Starknet will provide Ethereum-level composability, facilitating easy development and compounding innovation. The STARK Prover powers the StarkEx scalability engine, and has already demonstrated the ability to process 600K transactions in a single proof on Mainnet.

Write Ethereum-compatible smart contracts in popular programming languages, & run them much faster, on Substrate. A decentralized open source business model funded by developer treasuries on participating blockchains. All existing Ethereum smart contracts work on ParaState’s Ewasm VM (Pallet SSVM) without any change. ParaState expands the developer ecosystem by supporting 20+ programming languages to create Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. Examples include generic programming languages such as Solidity, Fe, Rust, and JavaScript, and domain-specific languages (DSLs) such as MOVE, DeepSEA, and Marlowe. Substrate-based blockchains, such as Polkadot parachains, already enjoy much higher TPS (transactions per second) than Ethereum. For a smart contract platform, compute performance is more important than TPS throughput. Try deploying smart contracts on ParaState.

The new scalability stack for Ethereum. Instant transactions and scalable smart contracts. Optimism is a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC): a for-profit corporation intended to produce a public benefit and operate in a responsible and sustainable manner. This means that we are obligated to balance the pecuniary interests of our stockholders with the best interests of those materially affected by our conduct, as well as a specific "public benefit charter" we incorporated with. The specific public benefit purpose of the Company is to enhance and enshrine fair access to public goods on the internet through the development of open source software. This charter represents our pledge to the Ethereum community to uphold its values by producing infrastructure which promotes the growth and sustainability of an ecosystem of public goods.

zkSync is Ethereum’s most user-centric ZK rollup. Unlike any other scaling approach, ZK rollup has no upper bound on the value it can securely handle in L2. Unlike optimistic rollups, all assets can be moved capital-efficiently and fast between ZK rollup and L1. zkSync has the lowest real tx costs across all existing and planned rollups. zkSync also supports meta-transactions, instant confirmations with economic finality, low-cost privacy, and more. Ease and fun of development are at the core of zkSync design. Integrate payments and atomic swaps in a few lines of code. Develop type-safe, functional style smart contracts on Zinc: a Rust-based framework. Deploy your existing EVM codebase with minimum modifications.

Stacks makes Bitcoin programmable, enabling decentralized apps and smart contracts that inherit all of Bitcoin’s powers. Build apps and smart contracts on Bitcoin. Stacks connects to Bitcoin, enabling you to build apps, smart contracts, and digital assets that are integrated with Bitcoin's security, capital, and network. Lock your STX temporarily to support the network’s security and consensus. As a reward, you’ll earn Bitcoin that miners transfer as part of Proof of Transfer. Stacks makes Bitcoin's $760B of capital programmable with smart contracts. Build a better financial system on top of Bitcoin that’s open, composable, and without intermediaries. Run your app’s logic on the blockchain with Clarity smart contracts. Clarity is a more secure and predictable language that prevents many bugs and exploits. Perfect for high-stakes code where bugs are not an option.

RSK the safest smart contract blockchain platform secured by the Bitcoin Network. Bitcoin is the greatest DeFi opportunity and fully enabled on RSK, the most secure smart contract platform in the world. Bitcoin users now can lend, borrow, trade and earn interest on their Bitcoin. The future of finance is decentralized. RSK is the most secure contract platform in the world. RSK’s Contracts goal is to add value and functionality to the bitcoin Contracts ecosystem by enabling smart contracts, near instant Contracts payments, and higher scalability. RSK Blockchain is connected to Bitcoin through Merged Contracts Mining and the two-way peg also known as the bridge. Built on top of RSK, RIF aims to create the building blocks to construct a fully decentralized internet to enable Decentralized Sharing Economies in order to empower and protect the value of individuals through identity, payments, storage, communications, gateways services and the marketplace.

Bitcoin Lightning Network. Instant Payments. Lightning-fast blockchain payments without worrying about block confirmation times. Security is enforced by blockchain smart-contracts without creating a on-blockchain transaction for individual payments. Payment speed measured in milliseconds to seconds. Scalability. Capable of millions to billions of transactions per second across the network. Capacity blows away legacy payment rails by many orders of magnitude. Attaching payment per action/click is now possible without custodians. Low Cost. By transacting and settling off-blockchain, the Lightning Network allows for exceptionally low fees, which allows for emerging use cases such as instant micropayments. Cross Blockchains. Cross-chain atomic swaps can occur off-chain instantly with heterogeneous blockchain consensus rules. So long as the chains can support the same cryptographic hash function, it is possible to make transactions across blockchains.

Build smart contracts with mainstream software stacks. Take a productive leap from Solidity to the vast universe of software components supported by Linux. Enable million-fold computational scalability, data availability of large files and low transaction costs. All while preserving the strong security guarantees of Ethereum. From games where players conceal their data to Enterprise applications that run on sensitive data, preserve privacy on your DApps. Descartes executes massive computational tasks off-chain, on a Linux virtual machine fully specified by a smart contract. The results of the computations are fully verifiable and enforceable on-chain by honest Descartes node runners, preserving the strong security guarantees of the underlying blockchain. Defeat the scalability limits of Ethereum, with million-fold computational gains, while preserving the strong security guarantees of the blockchain.

Polygon (previously Matic Network) is a protocol and a framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. Ethereum is the blockchain development platform of choice, but it has limitations. Polygon - a protocol and a framework for building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. One-click deployment of preset blockchain networks. Growing set of modules for developing custom networks. Interoperability protocol for exchanging arbitrary messages with Ethereum and other blockchain networks. Modular and optional “security as a service”. Adaptor modules for enabling interoperability for existing blockchain networks. Polygon combines the best of Ethereum and sovereign blockchains into an attractive feature set. Built by developers, for developers.

Next generation layer 2 for Ethereum dApps. Use your favorite tools and scale your dApp at the lowest cost. An aggregator plays the same role that a node plays in Ethereum. Client software can do remote procedure calls (RPCs) to an aggregator, using the standard API, to interact with an Arbitrum chain. The aggregator will then make calls to the EthBridge and produce transaction results to the client, just as an Ethereum node would. Most clients will use an aggregator to submit their transactions to an Arbitrum chain, although this is not required. There is no limit on how many aggregators can exist, nor on who can be an aggregator. To improve efficiency, aggregators will usually package together multiple client transactions into a single message to be submitted to the Arbitrum chain. Arbitrum also supports a privileged Sequencer that can order transactions and give low latency transaction receipts.