As the popularity of Ethereum grows, so do the gas fees needed for transactions. This is the root of plenty of controversy regarding the network and it has pushed the likes of Avalanche, Polkadot, and Solana to the forefront thanks to their lower fees and faster transactions.
But the co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of ConsenSys, Joe Lubin, isn’t too worried about this aspect:
“High gas fees are a measure of success. They’re a growth pain, they’re something that can’t be avoided. When a new technology becomes successful, it always has scaling issues. So whether it’s CPU cycles, or screen real estate, or memory, you’re basically going to have software engineers max out the capabilities of the technology. And it turns out we’re seeing consumers max out the capabilities of the technology.”
Lubin said that Ethereum 2.0 should arrive around “Q2 or possible slip into Q3 next year” and that it will deal with energy usage and transaction costs.
“We’re already seeing scalability happen at Layer 2, and at Layer 2 we’re seeing hundreds and soon tens of thousands of transactions per second that are actually very inexpensive—they’re Solana-inexpensive, Avalanche-inexpensive. Those are both cool systems, by the way, Solana and Avalanche, and as they get more utilized by consumers, we’re seeing transaction fees creep up to $1 and $2 for those technologies. Ethereum is going to be the blockchain of blockchains. It’s going to be the major digital asset settlement layer, it’s going to be the coordination layer for many different Layer 2 technologies.”
Lubin added that Ethereum now has close to 200,000 validators and that the number will only grow once the upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 happens: “The barrier to entry is very low, so anybody will be able to do it.”
He concluded:
“Entities like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, et cetera, in my opinion are FOMO’ing at the mouth to get into our ecosystem. But they’re massive regulated banking institutions, so it’s not going to be easy for them to do that sort of thing. And some of those investors, not JPMorgan specifically, have told us that investing in ConsenSys is a bit of a proxy for getting into the ecosystem … especially with that old money dying, or depreciating quite significantly, with this new sounder money, and soon to be ultra-sound money, growing in value exponentially, and also yielding quite significantly. Institutions, as well as people, like getting yield.”