Ethereum's Layer 2 Solutions to Unify in Months

Ethereum's Layer 2 Solutions Set to Become Interoperable Within Months

Ethereum's Layer 2 (L2) solutions are on the cusp of solving their interoperability issues, with significant upgrades expected to roll out in the coming months. This will enable seamless cross-chain swaps, human-readable addresses, trustless cross-chain messaging, and innovative unified liquidity bridges like Polygon's Agglayer.

Leaders in the Ethereum ecosystem, from Base to Across, predict that these upgrades will make Ethereum feel like a unified ecosystem once again. According to Across co-founder Hart Lambur, "When chains can interact in two seconds or less, the vision of a unified Ethereum comes to life."

The first of these upgrades is expected to go live in the next few weeks, with audited code for Across and Uniswap's new intent standard (EIP-7683) set to be deployed within the next week. Cross-chain orders will start flowing through the decentralized solvers system shortly thereafter, supported by fifty projects and protocols, including Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and Uniswap.

Ethereum's interoperability challenges have been a significant hurdle for the ecosystem, with 55 new rollups effectively isolated from one another. Users have had to navigate expensive and risky bridges to move between them, weighing heavily on ETH sentiment and price. However, the upcoming upgrades aim to address these issues and improve cohesion and interoperability within the Ethereum ecosystem.

Mallesh Pai, senior director of research at Consensys, believes that the first piece of the interoperability puzzle will be enabling simple cross-chain swaps between tokens on different L2s. He predicts that seamless token transfers will be possible within months, although full synchronous composability may still be some way off.

Jesse Pollack, lead contributor at Base, highlights two improvement proposals that he expects to have a significant impact on Ethereum's interoperability: ERC-7683 and RIP-7755. ERC-7683 defines standards for cross-chain execution, while RIP-7755 enables trustless cross-chain transactions using a permissionless network of off-chain relayers called Fulfillers.

Emmanuel Awosika, head of research from 2077 Collective,