Eric Chen, the head of the Injective project, has expressed serious concerns about the future of L1 blockchains. According to his assessment, as mass adoption of the technology grows, first-layer networks will increasingly sacrifice decentralization in favor of speed and efficiency. The reason is simple: users demand higher throughput, and developers make compromises to meet this demand.
Chen emphasizes that centralization indeed simplifies the scaling process. However, this creates an extremely dangerous precedent — a single point of failure. In the context of cryptocurrencies, where security and censorship resistance are fundamental values, such an approach could undermine the very essence of the technology.
As a solution to the problem, the head of Injective suggests focusing on dedicated zones and second-layer networks (L2). In his opinion, these solutions can provide the necessary performance without compromising the decentralization of the underlying L1 blockchain. L2 networks take on the load of processing transactions, leaving the first layer with security and consensus functions.
In my view, Chen's warning is not just a theoretical discussion but a clear signal to the market. We are already seeing some popular L1 blockchains making architectural compromises to boost TPS. In the long term, this could lead to a loss of trust from the most principled members of the community. Investors and developers should carefully monitor how much a project is willing to maintain decentralization under increasing load, rather than simply chasing performance metrics.