In the evening, after delivering the last order, while waiting for grilled cold noodles at a snack stall, my girlfriend sent a message: "The deposit you made on ERA last time has arrived, faster than the Ethereum mainnet by half an hour!" I stared at the bouncing deposit record on my phone screen and smiled, almost letting the grilled cold noodles in my hand get blown away by the wind—just last week I bet with her that this new public chain "might just be a facade," and now I've been thoroughly "slapped in the face."
Initially, I paid attention to ERA because I was always discouraged by the high gas fees of Ethereum when running errands. Once, I wanted to transfer a small amount of assets, and the transaction fees alone were enough to buy two breakfasts, which made me so angry that I closed my wallet on the spot. Later, I saw someone in the community recommending ERA, saying it was Ethereum's "Layer 2 scaling solution," with fast transactions and low costs. I put some money in with a try-it-out mentality, and it turned out to be just as they said: the same transfer operation on ERA had fees that were less than one-tenth of the mainnet, and the confirmation speed was as quick as the "on-time delivery" of a food delivery platform. During the few minutes of waiting for food, I could complete several interactions, which is very friendly for someone like me who has fragmented time.
Last weekend, I chatted with a senior from the computer science department, and as he flipped through ERA's technical documentation, he said: "You see, it uses 'Optimistic Rollup' technology, which is like opening a 'fast lane' for Ethereum, packaging a large number of transactions before putting them on-chain, ensuring security while improving efficiency. This is the real solution to the problem." I nodded, somewhat understanding, only knowing that now when I use ERA, I no longer have to worry about transaction fees, nor do I have to stare at the screen waiting for confirmation. Once, when helping my girlfriend transfer her saved tokens, the total cost was not even enough to buy a bottle of mineral water, and she immediately set ERA as her default network.
Now, every time I swipe my phone on my electric bike, I always open the ERA wallet to check, just like checking if the food in the delivery box has spilled. For someone like me, who has to be frugal about a few dollars in courier fees while wanting to test the waters in the crypto world, what’s most valuable about ERA is its "practicality"—it doesn't engage in flashy concepts but straightforwardly solves the problems of "slowness" and "high costs," allowing ordinary people to easily use blockchain. This feeling of bringing technology into everyday life feels more reliable than any slogan.
$ERA