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#Ethereum Con-Arguments
Below is an argument written by Maleficent_Plankton which won 1st place in the Ethereum Con-Arguments topic for a prior [Cointest](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_policy) round. Submit an argument in the Cointest yourself and earn Moons if you win. Moon prizes are: 1st - 600, 2nd - 300, 3rd - 150, and Best Analysis - 500.
> Ethereum has drastically changed in the past year now that it has rebranded itself as **Consensus/Settlement layer** for other Layer 2 Execution/Rollup networks. It is no longer trying to be a monolithic blockchain by itself. Because of this shift in design, many of its former CONs are no longer major issues. And many of the CONs that still exist often have a beneficial sides.
>
> I discuss the CONs of Ethereum and their impact on its users here:
>
> ## CONs
>
> **Gas Fees** (major):
>
> The biggest complaint for Ethereum is its network gas fees. Every transaction needs gas to pay for storage and processing power, and gas prices vary based on demand. Gas price is very volatile and often changes 2-5x in magnitude within the same day. ERC20 transfers are used for a large percentage of cryptocurrencies, and it's the reason much of DeFi is extremely expensive. If I wanted to send ERC20 tokens between exchanges, it's often cheaper to trade for XRP, ALGO, or some other microtransaction coin, transfer it using their other coin's native network, and then trade back into the original token. Basically: use a coin on a different network to avoid fees.
>
> Typical transaction fees for Ethereum were [between $2-10 over the past year](https://etherscan.io/chart/avg-txfee-usd), but they have shot up to $50+ several times in 2021.
>
> And that's just for basic transactions. Anyone who has tried to use more complex smart contracts like moving MATIC from Polygon mainnet back to ETH L1 mainnet during a time of high gas fees mid-year in 2021 saw $100-$200 gas fees. Transferring ERC-20 tokens (often $20-50) is also more gas expensive because it can't be done through native transfers like on the Cardano network. It's impractical to use swaps like Uniswap for small transactions due to these fees.
>
> In particular, One/Many-to-many batch transactions are extremely gas-expensive using Ethereum's account-based model compared to Bitcoin's and Cardano's UXTO-based model. [This batch transaction on Ethereum](https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0fe2542079644e107cbf13690eb9c2c65963ccb79089ff96bfaf8dced2331c92) cost over $5000 while [a similar eUXTO transaction on Cardano](https://adapools.org/transactions/e586c6340ee9e60a6c64f447feffe5f89bdabc7741666ecaa681081957938f56) only cost $0.50 in fees.
>
> On the other hand, these fees provide Ethereum long-term economic sustainability and resilience against DDoS and spam attacks.
>
> **Competition from other Smart Contract networks** (moderate):
>
> Ethereum has enjoyed its lead as the smart contract blockchain due to first-mover advantage. But there are now many efficient smart contract competitors like Algorand, Solana, and Cardano. Ethereum is now facing much competition. Who wants to pay $20 gas fees on Ethereum when you can get similar transactions for under $0.01 with Algo and Solana or $0.30 transactions with Cardano?
>
> Fortunately, the amount of competition is limited because Ethereum is positioning itself as a Settlement layer whereas these other networks are monolithic networks. All monolithic networks will eventually run into scaling issues due to long-term storage and bandwidth limits. It will really depend on how successful Ethereum's Layer 2 rollup solutions will be.
>
> **Future uncertainty about Layer 2 solutions** (major):
>
> Ethereum's long-term success is dependent on the success of its Layer 2 solutions.
>
> These Layer 2 solutions are still extremely early. Even after a year, L2 has a very fragmented adoption. The majority of centralized exchanges currently do not support Layer 2 rollup networks. A few have started to support Polygon, which is more of a Layer 2 side-chain that saves state every 256 blocks than a Layer 2 rollup. Very few CEXs allow for direct fiat on/off-ramping on L2 networks, which puts those networks out of reach of most users.
>
> Many of these Layer 2 networks (Arbitrum, Optimism, Loopring, ZKSync, etc), are not interoperable with each other. You can store your tokens on any specific L2 network, but they're stuck there. If you want to move your tokens back to Layer 1 or to another L2 network, you have to pay very expensive smart contract gas fees ($50-300). Eventually, there will be bridges between these networks, but we could be years away from widespread adoption.
>
> Fragmented liquidity is another huge issue. Each of these L2 networks has its own liquidity pool for each token it supports. You can store your token on the the L2 network, but you won't be able to trade or swap much if there are no liquidity pools for that token. Eventually, there will be Dynamic Automated Market Makers (dAMMs) that can share liquidity between networks, but they are complex and introduce their own weaknesses.
>
> Both Optimistic and ZK Rollups are handled off-chain and require a separate network nodes or smart contracts as infrastructure to validate transactions or generate ZK Proofs. They are very centralized in how they operate, so there's always the risk that their network operators could cheat their customers. By now, the community seems to agree that ZK rollups are the future rollup solution to decentralized L2 networks. There is only 1 notable instance of Plasma (Ethereum to Polygon network conversion), and no one uses it anymore since the Ethereum-Polygon bridge is easier to use. The biggest competitor to ZK rollups are Optimistic rollups, and those take too long to settle back to Layer 1 (1 week) and are still too expensive to use (20-50% of the cost of L1 Ethereum gas fees for transfers).
>
> **ZK Rollups** require special infrastructure to generate ZK Proofs. These are very computationally-expensive, potentially [thousands of times](https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html) more expensive that just doing the computation directly. To reduce the cost, they are done completely-centralized by specialized servers. Thus the cost of a ZK Rollup is cheap at about [$0.10 to $.30](https://l2fees.info/). But even at $0.10 per transfer and $0.50 per swap, these are still at least 10x more expensive than costs on Algorand and Solana. Users will have to decide whether the extra cost and hassle of using an L2 platform is worth the extra security of settling on the more-decentralized and secure Ethereum L1 network.
>
> **Ethereum Proof-of-Stake merge is arriving later than competitors** (moderate):
>
> The ETH PoS Beacon chain has been released, it's a completely separate blockchain from ETH and won't merge with the main blockchain [until later this year](https://decrypt.co/78690/ethereum-2-staking-tops-21-billion-merge-horizon), giving its competitors plenty of time to provide FUD. We still don't know how successful the merge will be. Currently, stakes are locked, preventing investors from selling. We don't know what will happen to the price once staking unlocks.
>
> **MEV and Dark Forest attacks** (minor):
>
> [MEV](https://np.reddit.com/r/MPlankton/comments/rs4wp2/the_dark_forest_of_cryptocurrency/) is actually a pretty big issue for networks with high gas arbitrage and mempools like Ethereum, but most casual users will never notice hostile arbitrage. When you broadcast your transaction to the network, there are armies of bots and automated miners that analyze your transaction to see if they can perform arbitrage strategies on your transaction such as front-running, sandwiching, excluding transactions, stealing/replaying transactions, and other pure-profit plays. "Dark Forest" attacks have reveled that bots are constantly monitoring the network, and they can front-run you unless you have your own private army of miners.
>
> **Final Word**
>
> Overall, I still think the PROs outweigh the CONs for Ethereum in the long-run due to its first-mover advantage and the long-term sustainability of the Ethereum network.
*****
Would you like to learn more? [Click here](/r/CointestOfficial/comments/ru2luf/top_10_ethereum_conarguments_january_2022/) to be taken to the original topic-thread or you can scan through the [Cointest Archive](/r/CointestOfficial/wiki/cointest_archive#wiki_Ethereum) to find arguments on this topic in other rounds. Pros and cons per topic will likely change for every new post.
Since this is a con-argument, what could be a better time to promote the Skeptics Discussion thread? You can find the latest thread [here](/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1256ynn/daily_general_discussion_march_29_2023_gmt0/).

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