A new wave of Ethereum Layer 3 protocols is emerging that could reduce transaction costs to fractions of a cent, potentially unlocking blockchain technology for everyday consumer use cases.

Leading the charge is ZkStream, a zero-knowledge proof-based protocol that achieves transaction finality in under 100 milliseconds at costs below $0.001 per transaction.

“Layer 3 is where blockchain finally becomes invisible to users,” said Elena Vasquez, CTO of ZkStream. “People won’t know they’re using blockchain — they’ll just know that payments are instant and essentially free.”

Use cases being explored include micropayments for content creators, machine-to-machine IoT payments, and real-time gaming economies with thousands of transactions per second.