The long-awaited Ethereum scaling launch has been delayed. The Ethereum Layer Two Scaling solution was a very anticipated scaling solution that would help scale Ethereum by 100x before Ethereum 2.0. It was scheduled to launch in the next few weeks, but about three days ago, they announced that it would not launch until July at least.
This is quite a setback, especially at this stage for Ethereum because Optimism was meant to provide high scalability before the ETH 2.0.
This upgrade would have allowed applications to integrate to scaling and would have seen a magnificent reduction in gas fees for Ethereum applications to make them usable for the average Ethereum user again.
For the next few months, Ethereum will remain a playground for wealthy users.
Despite the high fees, the demand for access to the Ethereum network is still relatively high, and the reason the fees are increased is that everyone wants to use Ethereum.
This delay, though, does not mean that you should panic sell your Ethereum? No, it does not, even though the delay is very disappointing.
Despite Optimism delayed, it would still come later this year. One thing to note is that, despite it being a big scaling solution from Ethereum, it is not the only one. There are about a dozen scaling solutions for Ethereum; Starkware, Arbitrarium, Hermes, Polygon, etc.
The problem with the optimism delay is that the inner click of critical Ethereum decentralized applications have all decided to use Optimism. Uniswap, Synthetics are all planning on using Optimism which will not be out in a few months.
The good thing about the delay news is that other blockchains now have a fantastic opportunity.
Looking at what is happening in the next few months, Ethereum stagnates with massive fees and Optimism; firstly, parachains are coming to Polkadot and Kusama. There are a lot of project releases that are expected to come to these networks. The ecosystem is ready to work, but all it requires is parachain launches.
Polka dot, from the look of things, is currently the highest hype chain which is worth the hype.
Cosmos is one chain to take note of; their inter blockchain communication protocol is expected to allow great interoperability between blockchains. Cosmos is home to excellent DeFi protocols, and some of the biggest ones outside the Ethereum Universe live in Cosmos. The IDC launch is expected to take this ecosystem to the next level.
