Universal Blockchains Buckle Under Real-World Demands

General-purpose blockchains are failing to meet the specific operational demands of various industries, such as construction and asset leasing, where disputes over informal agreements or data integrity are primary pain points. For use cases like audit trails, which require simple immutability and ordering of stateless messages, the complex verification machinery of chains like Ethereum is overkill, prompting founders to build specialized layer 1s (L1s) for better speed and efficiency.

Furthermore, traditional finance requires regulatory control—like native KYC, AML, and asset freezing capabilities—that general L1s cannot provide. This necessity is driving financial institutions to build their own regulated, permissioned blockchains, exemplified by projects from JPMorgan and Stripe.

Despite this shift toward specialized chains, generalized L1s like Bitcoin and Ethereum will remain crucial as security anchors. Specialized networks can periodically use these large, established chains to verify snapshots, preventing historical rewrites and bolstering security, creating an ecosystem where purpose-built blockchains handle specific tasks while relying on major networks for robust security guarantees.

(Source：Cointelegraph)