The use of this site and the content contained therein is governed by the Terms of Use. When you use this site you acknowledge that you have read the Terms of Use and that you accept and will be bound by the terms hereof and such terms as may be modified from time to time.
All text, graphics, audio, design and other works on the site are the copyrighted works of nasscom unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Content on the site is for personal use only and may be downloaded provided the material is kept intact and there is no violation of the copyrights, trademarks, and other proprietary rights. Any alteration of the material or use of the material contained in the site for any other purpose is a violation of the copyright of nasscom and / or its affiliates or associates or of its third-party information providers. This material cannot be copied, reproduced, republished, uploaded, posted, transmitted or distributed in any way for non-personal use without obtaining the prior permission from nasscom.
The nasscom Members login is for the reference of only registered nasscom Member Companies.
nasscom reserves the right to modify the terms of use of any service without any liability. nasscom reserves the right to take all measures necessary to prevent access to any service or termination of service if the terms of use are not complied with or are contravened or there is any violation of copyright, trademark or other proprietary right.
From time to time nasscom may supplement these terms of use with additional terms pertaining to specific content (additional terms). Such additional terms are hereby incorporated by reference into these Terms of Use.
Disclaimer
The Company information provided on the nasscom web site is as per data collected by companies. nasscom is not liable on the authenticity of such data.
nasscom has exercised due diligence in checking the correctness and authenticity of the information contained in the site, but nasscom or any of its affiliates or associates or employees shall not be in any way responsible for any loss or damage that may arise to any person from any inadvertent error in the information contained in this site. The information from or through this site is provided "as is" and all warranties express or implied of any kind, regarding any matter pertaining to any service or channel, including without limitation the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement are disclaimed. nasscom and its affiliates and associates shall not be liable, at any time, for any failure of performance, error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, computer virus, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorised access to, alteration of, or use of information contained on the site. No representations, warranties or guarantees whatsoever are made as to the accuracy, adequacy, reliability, completeness, suitability or applicability of the information to a particular situation.
nasscom or its affiliates or associates or its employees do not provide any judgments or warranty in respect of the authenticity or correctness of the content of other services or sites to which links are provided. A link to another service or site is not an endorsement of any products or services on such site or the site.
The content provided is for information purposes alone and does not substitute for specific advice whether investment, legal, taxation or otherwise. nasscom disclaims all liability for damages caused by use of content on the site.
All responsibility and liability for any damages caused by downloading of any data is disclaimed.
nasscom reserves the right to modify, suspend / cancel, or discontinue any or all sections, or service at any time without notice.
For any grievances under the Information Technology Act 2000, please get in touch with Grievance Officer, Mr. Anirban Mandal at data-query@nasscom.in.
Scalability has always been a big concern for blockchain protocols. However, a range of powerful solutions have emerged to tackle the scalability issues of blockchain protocols. Layer-2 solutions and Avalanche Subnets are the widely popular solutions for improving scalability while offering additional benefits such as a greater degree of security, composability, and interoperability.
Let’s dive deeper into the Avalanche Subnet vs Layer2 solution to understand their viability for web3 projects.
Understanding Avalanche Subnets and Layer-2 solution
Avalanche Subnets:
Avalanche Subnets is basically an appchain solution for enabling the development of sovereign, dApp-specific blockchain networks that are interconnected, allowing the whole Avalanche ecosystem to scale endlessly while offering inter-subnets Interoperability. Subnets allow implementation of custom virtual machine and meanwhile supports all the Ethereum-based smart contracts and its client functionalities. Prominent projects building their Avalanche Subnets are DeFi Kingdom, Rymedi, Meld, DOS, Dexalot, Mintara, and more.
Learn more about Avalanche Subnets from our detailed blog on this below:
Layer-2 scaling solutions or L2s refer to the blockchain networks built on the top of Layer-1 blockchains, for example Ethereum. Similar to Avalanche Subnets, L2 scaling solutions aim to address the scalability issues and thereby improve the efficiency of underlying main blockchains. Layer-2 take the transaction load off from the Layer-1 to process transactions off-chain while still remaining connected to L1 for leveraging security and trustlessness. Polygon zkEVM, Optimism, Arbitrum, Starknet, zkSync Era are some of the popular Ethereum L2s.
Learn more about Layer-2 solutions and application-specific chains from our detailed guide mentioned below:
Key factors for choosing between Avalanche Subnets vs Layer2 scaling solution
Let’s dive into the analysis of Avalance Subnets vs layer-2 solutions on multiple parameters, enabling enterprises and dApp projects to understand its significance:
Degree of Scalability:
Subnets or Layer-2s— the blockchain ecosystem you choose— it must deliver the required throughput of your dApp. Further, the dApp should scale over time with a growing number of daily active users and transactions.
Avalanche Subnets offer better scalability than Layer-1, for example the C–chain on Avalanche is designed to offer 4,500 TPS. However, subnets are designed specifically to offer modularity and sovereignty.
Layer-2 solution, on the other hand, like rollups also offer higher scalability. For example, Polygon zkEVM claims to offer a lower throughput of 2,000 TPS. Also, zkSync offers Ethereum-based ZkRollups that reportedly offer 100,000 TPS. Hence, if your project needs massive scalability, then Layer-2 solutions like Rollups, sidechains, and Plasma chains are the way to go.
Key factors for adoption:
What are the TPS requirements of your project?
What’s the current and future number of DAU– daily active users?
Does your project need to scale with future demand?
Level of Security
Having reliable security and full decentralization must be another key considerations for dApps, besides scalability. Speaking about Avalanche Subnets, they need to choose their own validators and maintain their own security as independent chains, which can be intermediating and vulnerable to attacks.
Regarding Layer-2 solutions, they are rich in security. L2 solution like rollups can inherits security from the main chain (L1) and therefore, they ensure optimal security without compromising on decentralization. There’s no need for setting up new validators or security or consensus mechanism. Projects needing robust security should choose Layer-2 solution to avoid hassle and security-related issues.
Key considerations for adoption:
Are you confident about maintaining security on your project?
Will you use validators and consensus from mainchain?
Do you want to adopt a different and unique consensus other than Layer-1?
Customizability
Avalanche Subnets are designed with a focus on customization. You can customize tokenomics, gas fees, validator requirements, virtual machine, and logics.
Whereas, Layer-2 solutions will only allow for customization if you are launching your own L2 chain, for example– Rollups. Deploying your dApp on any public L2 chain will require you to comply with the existing ecosystem parameters.
Hence, Avalanche Subnets is definitely the ideal solution if your project needs customizability instead of using a generic ecosystem.
Key factors for adoption:
Will your dApp custom tokens, gas fee, on-chain governance, etc?
Does your dApp has any dependency on Layer-1?
Customizability or security— which is more important for you?
Modularity
Subnets are high in modularity as they more flexible than Layer-2s. For example, one can create a Subnet to run a decentralized exchange while another Subnet can be used for a payment gateway. These two different Subnets will run parallel, but they will be interconnected.
Layer-2 solutions, like rollups also offer modularity as you can create different rollup chains for specific use cases as well as offload some functions like execution, settlement, and consensus to different layers. But, the same level of ease will be difficult to achieve in case of L2s. Hence, Subnets is the recommend for this requirement.
Key things to consider:
Does your business need various use case-specific L2s or Subnets?
Do you want to specialize some of your dApp’s functionalities?
Will your project needs customizability, along with modularity?
The need for Interoperability
Subnets are powered with ‘Avalanche Warp Messaging’ that enables cross-subnet communication and meanwhile allows projects to implement arbitrary communication protocols between two different Subnets.
The same level of interoperability can be hard to achieve in case of layer-2 scaling solutions because they lack cross-layer (L2 to L2) communication. Communicating with Layer-2 requires you to communicate with Layer-1 first, which is practically a time-taking and inefficient interoperability approach.
Therefore, interoperability-focused dApps should go with Avalanche Subnets.
Key things to consider for adoption:
How frequently your dApp needs inter-protocol communication?
Will your dApp allows users to engage in cross-dApps activities, like trading assets?
Does your project want to use logics and data from other dApps?
Privacy of on-chain data
Privacy is very important for all kinds of dApps. Avalanche Subnets allow projects to keep their data and other information private by creating their own appchains. The data here is only accessible to a set of authorized validators.
Taking about Layer-2 scaling solutions, projects can build their own Rollup chain, for examples, with Polygon CDK. These types of chains offers private appchain environment that maintains data confidentiality and safety.
As we see, choosing between Polygon supenets vs Layer-2 solutions on ‘Privacy parameter’ seems difficult. But, projects that needs customizabiity and Interoperability aside from privacy, Supernets is for them. If not, then Layer-2 solutions works the best.
Key considerations for adoption:
Is your organization strive to keep the data and information private?
How crucial is the confidentiality of data in your project?
Private or open— which ecosystem suits your use case?
Dependency on main chain
Avalanche Subnets, as we know, are independent blockchains that can specificity their tokenomics, execution logic, maintain state, determine fee regime, etc. They have zero dependency on main chain.
Layer-2 solutions, as the name suggests, they are built on layer-2 and hence depend on main chain for reliable security and authenticity. So, for projects looking for sovereignty and no Layer-1 dependency, Avalanche Subnets is a viable choice.
Key things to consider:
Is your project capable of maintaining robust security on its own?
Can you see any impact of having dependency on mainchain?
How important is application-specific customization for your project?
Costs and resources
The threshold of bearing operational cost like computation fee, validators’ incentives, and infrastructure management costs are different for every projects. Likewise, the ability to manage hardware/software requirements differs.
Avalanche Subnets are sovereign blockchain, hence they need to bear cost of validators, computation, and other costs. Plus, their hardware and software requirements for Subnets are delicate.
But, in Layer-2 solutions, you do not need to bootstrap infrastructure or validators because Layer-1 provides all of these.
Key things to consider:
Will your users pay for high transaction fees?
Can you manage validators and their incentives?
How challenging is to manage hardware and software infrastructure for you?
Here’s a brief comparison:
About The Author
Dr. Ravi Chamria is co-founder CEO of Zeeve Inc, an Enterprise Blockchain company. He has an experience of 18+ years in IT consulting spanning across Fintech, InsureTech, Supply Chain and eCommerce. He is an executive MBA from IIM, Lucknow and a prolific speaker on emerging technologies like Blockchain, IoT and AI/ML.
Passionate About: Blockchain, Supply Chain Management, Digital Lending, Digital Payments, AI/ML, IoT
That the contents of third-party articles/blogs published here on the website, and the interpretation of all information in the article/blogs such as data, maps, numbers, opinions etc. displayed in the article/blogs and views or the opinions expressed within the content are solely of the author's; and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of NASSCOM or its affiliates in any manner. NASSCOM does not take any liability w.r.t. content in any manner and will not be liable in any manner whatsoever for any kind of liability arising out of any act, error or omission. The contents of third-party article/blogs published, are provided solely as convenience; and the presence of these articles/blogs should not, under any circumstances, be considered as an endorsement of the contents by NASSCOM in any manner; and if you chose to access these articles/blogs , you do so at your own risk.
Zeeve is an enterprise-grade Blockchain Infrastructure Automation Platform. Join the growing list of clients that trust us with their Blockchain initiatives
The cryptocurrency market is rapidly evolving, and as we approach 2025, the need for efficient, secure, and innovative crypto exchanges is higher than ever. Businesses looking to enter or enhance their position in this space must focus on…
The cryptocurrency landscape in India has grown exponentially, with increasing adoption of digital assets among traders, investors, and tech-savvy users. As we look ahead to 2025, crypto exchanges and trading apps are expected to play an even…
The blockchain and cryptocurrency industries continue to evolve at a rapid pace, bringing both innovation and regulatory challenges to the forefront. As these technologies become increasingly integral to global financial systems, governments and…
Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) have revolutionized the way blockchain projects secure funding. It is becoming an irreplaceable element of the crypto. By enabling developers to bypass traditional financial institutions, ICOs democratize fundraising,…
The popularity of cryptocurrencies has led to a surge in demand for crypto exchange platforms, with Binance emerging as one of the leading names in the industry. For entrepreneurs looking to establish their own exchange, leveraging a Binance…
Introduction
The cryptocurrency market continues to witness exponential growth, creating lucrative opportunities for businesses worldwide. However, launching a cryptocurrency exchange can be daunting due to the complexities of development,…
