Ethereum Layer 2 solutions are being deployed left, right and center. Since necessity is the mother of invention and gas fees on the base layer have gotten high, there is no surprise that the dev teams have sped up their schedules. However, they are still in the initial testing phase and still being tested / tweaked. It’s advisable to proceed with caution until they are mature enough to handle Layer 1 level loads. How to see the fees on them though? Meet L2 Fees.

Another brand child of Ethereum developer David Mihal - the creator of Crypto Fees (tracking protocol fees generation) and Money Movers (tracking the protocol value settlements), L2 Fees tracks the fees across the operational Ethereum Layer 2 solutions. It also classifies the cost of various basic transaction activities, namely the cost of sending Ethereum, cost of sending other tokens and the cost of completing a swap on the networks.

Each Ethereum Layer 2 solution has it's own strengths and drawbacks, including trust assumptions, degree of decentralization, emergency response, stage of maturity, tx speed, withdrawal time, so do your research before jumping on the bandwagon. Arbitrum and Optimism on the list have reduced speed / tx limit to test the system.

They are not operating at maximum capacity currently and the team will increase it gradually, once the protocols are tested further and more mature. Ethereum Layer 2 solution Aztec Protocol, on the other hand, ensures private transactions, so operations on the protocol are even higher than Ethereum.

The Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions are decentralized protocols that increase the processing capacity of the Ethereum blockchain (hence scaling) and as a result, relieve congestion on the network. They work by delegating the network processing “off-chain” to their own chain, processing it there, before settling the final balances on the base layer mainnet. It’s extremely necessary that big exchanges like Coinbase, Binance, etc. integrate them, so average users can benefit from increased throughput and more capacity on blockchains.