What is the difference between Subnet and Layer2?
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What is the difference between Subnet and Layer2?
Difference between Subnet and Layer2.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: 0xKanna
Translation: TechFlow intern
Recently, there has been a lot of news about L1s—for example, BSC is scaling using Subnets, while Celo is scaling with L2 Rollups.
Both solutions can scale throughput, but what's the difference?
Subnet became well-known thanks to Avalanche. It allows organizations or developers to build and deploy customized blockchains tailored for specific applications, similar to Cosmos.
Recently, Avalanche’s Subnets have attracted high-quality games such as DefiKingdoms and PlayAscenders. Migrating Web3 games to Subnets makes great sense, as it reduces deployment complexity for game companies, fosters more new blockchain games, and allows games to operate independently without being tied to other applications on the main chain.
L2 also includes various scalability solutions, such as Optimistic Rollups (e.g., Arbitrum) and ZkRollups (e.g., ZkSync, Starknet). These outsource execution to a separate layer, allowing the main chain to focus on consensus and data availability.
Although Subnets are excellent, they remain part of the same chain and are still subject to bottlenecks from the main chain—consensus and processing layers still exist. In contrast, L2 provides a completely separate execution layer that doesn’t need to handle consensus, enabling much greater scalability.
When you want your sidechain to achieve higher throughput than the public chain without sacrificing security, the value of L2 becomes evident.
Therefore, the advantages of Subnets: easier deployment of new blockchains (lower overhead), and reuse of the same validators. Disadvantages: cannot share security with the main chain, and cross-chain bridges are vulnerable to hacks.
Meanwhile, the advantages of L2: exponential scaling in TPS and execution layer (since consensus isn't handled), and shared security with the main chain. Disadvantages: deploying new blockchains requires higher learning costs, and the technology is still immature.
In my view: the key difference between these two approaches is that L2 does not compromise the security of the main chain, whereas although Subnets can achieve higher TPS, they tend to become significantly more centralized.
Overall, both are excellent scalability solutions, and the choice depends on the specific use case. If you want to quickly deploy a new chain for gaming, Subnet is undoubtedly the more composable and lower-cost option. If you need to support multiple applications while sharing the main chain’s security, then L2 is clearly your best choice.
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