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by muneeb 1983 days ago
Ethereum 2 is very different. It is proof of stake (PoS). This reuses the proof of work of Bitcoin (so very different properties for how hard it is to change blockchain history). Also, PoS has some bootstrapping issues where a new node cannot independently (without trusting other nodes) verify the history of blockchains.

Scalability properties are also very different. Eth2 tried the concepts of sharding between <pick a number> chains. That has issues around added complexity between the shards and contracts needing to execute on shards where other data/logic they need is already available (so gravitational pull towards a mega shard). Stacks has no shards and scales horizontally. FWIW, Eth2 seems to be doing a slow move away from the sharding concept towards layer-2 like scalability as well. They disabled code execution for shards and using them more for data availability in latest iterations.
1 comments
KMag 1983 days ago
> layer-2 like scalability

Sorry, I'm not familiar with any blockchain layer model. Do you have a reference to the model this "layer-2" comes from? Clearly we're not talking about the OSI network model.

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dlubarov 1983 days ago
Layer 2 protocols are just those that operate "on top of" a base protocol, such as Lightning Network (on top of Bitcoin), roll_up (on top of Ethereum), or POA Network (also Ethereum).

(I would argue that the terms are imprecise though -- some protocols are described as operating "on top of Ethereum", but have their own consensus etc. which can function without Eth, so they could also be viewed as layer 1s with a bridge.)

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