The 1984 Processor Problem: Web3 scaling demands P2P clearing, not bigger blockchains | Opinion

There is a common misconception in the current narrative on web3 scaling that mass adoption requires faster, bigger, and more powerful blockchains. Every cycle, a new generation of chains emerges, promising millions of transactions per second and near-zero fees. 

In the history of computing, one million instructions per second (1 MIPS) was achieved by supercomputers in 1964, minicomputers in 1977, and by 1984, the average Intel home processor had caught up, pushing around 1-3 MIPS. Today, modern computing operates in Teraflops (trillions of operations), and with supercomputers, we are experiencing Peta or Exaflops (quadrillions and quintilions of operations), all while blockchains still continue to discuss millions in TPS, from a bygone era. This emphasis on throughput is a technological dead end, eerily similar to a fundamental mistake made in the early days of computing — the 1984 Processor Problem.

L1 blockchains bring back the 1984 problem

In the 1980s, computer engineers were obsessed with increasing the clock speed of single-core processors. The belief was that a faster clock led to a faster computer. They pushed the physical limits of silicon until they hit a technological dead end themselves. The heat and power consumption became unmanageable, creating a hard physical limit to this approach. The solution that unlocked the next era of computing was then not a faster single core, but the shift to multi-core processing and, more importantly, specialization and parallelization.

Today, L1 and L2 blockchains are making the exact same mistake. They are attempting to be the single, monolithic engine for every type of transaction, from high-value transfers to micro-payments in personal banking. It does not work.

Think of it like a trip to the grocery store. When you buy apples, oranges, and bananas, you don’t settle the payment individually for every single fruit you pick up. You aggregate the items, receive one invoice, and settle the total at the end. Current blockchains are inefficiently trying to settle every apple and orange individually. Blockchain was designed for final settlement, not for high-frequency, low-value clearing. These are the structural failures that must be addressed before mass adoption can be achieved.

Structural barriers to web3 adoption

Largely, the Gas Fee Barrier is the most encountered challenge in scaling. Even low-cost chains require users to pay a fee for every interaction, building psychological and economic barriers to adoption. In reality, web3 requires zero-gas settlement for the vast majority of daily interactions. 

The next challenge to immediately solve is Liquidity Fragmentation. Assets are siloed across hundreds of chains, creating isolated pools of liquidity. Today, cross-chain bridges are a security nightmare, responsible for billions in hacks. In the first half of 2025 alone, hackers stole over $2.17 billion, with cross-chain bridges and access control exploits being primary attack vectors. This fragmentation is the antithesis of a healthy, unified financial market that web3 can create. 

We must acknowledge that building a truly cross-chain dApp is a complex, multi-protocol engineering feat. Developers are forced to spend their time managing the plumbing of multiple chains rather than focusing on the application layer. This complexity slows innovation and directly translates into the clunky user experiences that plague web3 applications today.

The shift to P2P clearing?

A true solution to the 1984 Processor Problem is to embrace specialization and move the bulk of transactional activity off the main chain. We need a solution for peer-to-peer trustlessness where we don’t have 30,000 computers supervising the trade, but we still settle on-chain in the end.

The recommended approach goes against the grain of creating another Layer-2 rollup, which still relies on the L1 for execution and finality. It encourages establishing a Layer-3 network that specializes in high-frequency, peer-to-peer clearing and settlement. This L3 can use simple and updated, capital-efficient TrustFi technology to make real-time, non-custodial, cross-chain trading occur off-chain. In TrustFi, millions of transactions are cleared daily between banks, and only the net balances are settled through the central bank. In web3, the L1 is the central bank for final settlement, and the L3 becomes the trustless, decentralized clearing house. 

The vast majority of user interactions could thus become gasless, removing the primary psychological barrier to entry. The L3 can also act as a ‘network of networks,’ unifying fragmented liquidity pools without relying on risky bridges. Finally, developers can build complex, cross-chain applications that hide the underlying complexity of multiple blockchains.

The history of computing teaches us that scaling is achieved more quickly through architectural innovation, not brute force. We must stop trying to build a single, faster processor and instead build the specialized, parallelized infrastructure that the global economy demands. The future of web3 is not in bigger blocks, but in trustless, P2P clearing layers that finally bring the principles of decentralization in sync with the speed and cost suited to modern life.