Recently, I’ve been pondering a question — why do some people say certain public chains are L0, while others are L1? How exactly is this layering defined?

Actually, the layered architecture of blockchain is quite interesting. In simple terms, L0 is the foundational infrastructure, like the base of the entire ecosystem. You can think of L0 as the system that enables other blockchains to operate on top of it, responsible for handling communication and asset transfers between different chains.

Why do we need this kind of layering? The core reason is to address scalability, security, and usability issues. Each layer provides more functionality on top of the previous one, much like building blocks. The more stable the lower layer, the higher the upper layers can be built.

The L0 layer is especially critical because it determines the performance ceiling of the entire ecosystem. Polkadot is a typical example — it uses a relay chain as the backbone, with various parachains running independently on top. This design ensures security while enabling interoperability. Avalanche follows a similar approach, providing open infrastructure for DeFi applications to freely create. Another example is Cosmos, which has a more aggressive philosophy — allowing developers to directly build fully independent blockchains and connect them via the IBC protocol.

Although these three projects differ in implementation, they all aim to solve the same problem: how to increase throughput and flexibility of the entire ecosystem while maintaining security. That’s why innovation at the L0 layer has been a focus of market attention over the past couple of years.