Polygon’s CEO says that L3s are taking away the value of Ethereum, which has sparked controversy

Polygon CEO Marc Boiron sparked controversy over X over the weekend after arguing that Layer-3 networks are not necessary to scale Ethereum and are only there to steal the core value.

On April 1, the CEO of Polygon Labs, the measurement network for Ethereum layer-2, will not work on layer 3s because it is not needed to measure existing networks.

“L3s exist only to take value from Ethereum and take it on top of the L2s that L3s are built on,” he said.

However, Boiron's comments did not go without a hitch. One commenter Layer-2s commented on Ethereum “ARE value on Ethereum”, Boyron responded in partial agreement, but added:

“I don't agree that L2 value is Ethereum's value. Just take this to the extreme. If all L3s were put into one L2, Ethereum would essentially hold no value, and thus, Ethereum's security would be at risk.”

“Also, we don't care what people do. You can build L3s on anything, including polygon networks,” he continued. “We're not trying to absorb all the value on Polygon Networks instead of sharing a fair share with Ethereum.”

Boyron added that Polygon's mission was to parallelize and personalize the EVM when no one else was doing it, with the right technology in place. “L3s are inconsistent with that mission,” he argued.

Layer-3 protocols are built on top of L2s to provide application-specific DApps with a variety of solutions for scalability, performance, functionality, customization, and costs.

Leading players in the L3 ecosystem and L2 networking solutions include Orbs, Xai, zkSync Hyperchains and the recently launched Degen Chain on Arbitrum Orbit. However, the sector is still relatively small, with only four L3 tokens listed by CoinGecko.

Related: Now you can deploy your own L3 package for $50/month.

Meanwhile, Peter Hymond, senior partnership manager at Offchain Labs, argued that there are many benefits to L3s that do not take away Ethereum's value.

Lower cost of native bridging from L2 than L1, lower on-chain cost, custom gas tokens and special state transfer functions are some of them.

Patrick McCorry, a researcher at the Arbitrum Foundation, said he was surprised by Boiron's takeover.

“L3s seem like a no-brainer, especially when they eventually allow L2 to be the settlement layer (ie it's cheaper to run the bridge) and ultimately rely on Ethereum as the global order service + final arbiter of settlement.

On March 31, Helus Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz appeared to agree with Mark Boiron in a separate post on X that “L3s are essentially centralized servers sitting on top of other centralized servers (L2s) – controlled by MultiSig.”

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin In late 2022, he fueled the L3 debate by saying that Layer-3s serve a specific purpose in balancing by providing “tailored functionality.” A third layer on the blockchain only makes sense if it provides a different functionality to Layer-2s, he said at the time.

Magazine: The Big Questions: What Satoshi Nakamoto Thought About ZK-Proofs?