2022 Rollup Usage and Alternative Scaling Solutions

The outlook for rollups in 2023 is relatively positive, owing to the fact that rollups generally have an optimal trade-off between security and costs. After all, gas costs on rollups are amortized over all transactions. However, at current ETH prices, it would appear that the difference in costs across rollups makes marginal differences. This will not be the case in a bull market should ETH trade at higher prices, where the minute difference of cents today can become a stark difference of dollars. Essentially, this means that over the long run, only the most gas-efficient rollups will outcompete the others.

It also remains a question if rollups can attract liquidity on a comparable scale to Ethereum, with one of the major concerns being that many rollups today are still centrally operated. Moreover, there is no incentive for rollup operators to decentralize their current role anytime soon. As such, centralization concerns for rollups will likely remain for the foreseeable future, at least, until one major rollup starts decentralizing its operator nodes.