L2s Are Thriving—What About Ethereum?

Original author: _gabrielShapir0

Original translation: Saoirse, Foresight News

Editor's note: Based on L2BEAT data and multi-chain operational realities, the author _gabrielShapir0 points out that while leading enterprise L2s are commercially successful, most remain at Stage 0/1 and have not achieved Stage 2 final settlement, contributing very little in fees to Ethereum (e.g., Base pays about $290 per day). The author argues that L2 commercial success does not equal Ethereum's success; it is essentially regulatory arbitrage and brand borrowing, and suggests shifting R&D focus to Ethereum-native, non-replicable areas such as CROPS (censorship resistance, open-source freedom, privacy, security).

Supported by extensive public data and regulatory logic, this article systematically rethinks the "rollup-centric" roadmap assumptions of recent years. Its core contribution is exposing a frequently avoided question: when L2 operators choose to remain in an intervenable state based on their own interests, how should Ethereum position itself? Whether or not readers agree with its conclusions, the misalignment of interests and boundary conditions presented provide a verifiable framework for discussion. At the end, Ethereum community member Ryan Berckmans offers a differing view for reference.

The paradox: L2s are a huge commercial success, but largely a failure for Ethereum

By every business metric, various L2s have achieved tremendous success and have also driven a revival of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Robinhood Chain is the most striking example, sparking a new round of debate: whether and how Ethereum should adapt to the various demands of L2s. This leading global stock trading platform serves nearly 28 million users across 38 countries, tokenizes its core business into stock tokens, and deploys them to a self-custodial wallet supporting over 120 countries. On its first day, it integrated with Uniswap to enable 24/7 token trading, built the GonzoFi experimental environment for developers, and allowed users to deposit tokens into lending pools.

Other L2s are also growing rapidly. Base, within a publicly traded company, has reached $14.42 billion in locked assets; Arbitrum One has $12.6 billion. The emergence of Orbit and OP development kits has turned launching a public chain into a procurement decision.

None of this is accidental: operating an L2 is itself a highly profitable business. Robinhood alone generates $3–4 million in daily on-chain revenue from this chain, not counting potential earnings from commercial partnerships related to its trust token wrapping business (which underpins the stock token business).

Faced with such booming commercial success of L2s, people can't help but ask again: where exactly does the value of these L2s lie? And what does Ethereum get out of it?

L2BEAT categorizes L2s into several types. The most important is Rollup, which includes Robinhood Chain, Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Rollups are divided into Stage 0, Stage 1, and Stage 2. Only Stage 2 rollups truly hand final settlement to Ethereum smart contracts. Stage 0 is mostly fully controlled by the sequencer operator; Stage 1 is generally controlled by a security council with multisig management authority. Although these controls are masked by various surface designs (e.g., some chains claim "forced transaction inclusion"), operators still have absolute control over the entire chain; Ethereum can only help identify fraud but cannot enforce sanctions.

Several years have passed since Vitalik published "A rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap" in October 2020 and proposed the stage classification criteria in November 2022. Currently, only four chains are truly labeled Stage 2: Facet with $661,000 locked, Honeypot v2 with $1,000, Aztec with less than $1,000, and Ethscriptions with no statistics. The combined total locked value of these four chains is less than $700,000. In contrast, Base and Arbitrum One have $14.42 billion and $12.6 billion locked respectively, both stuck at Stage 1. Robinhood Chain has $2.9 billion locked, but its contracts can be instantly upgraded by a 7-of-8 multisig account; if a malicious upgrade occurs, users have no exit window at all. The fraud proof system only accepts proofs from two whitelisted entities; operators can also censor any transaction without delay, including those claimed to be "force-included" (L2BEAT project page, 2026-09-07).

There is no reason to believe this is temporary. In January 2026, Optimism co-founder Mark Tyneway wrote: "Stage 2 deviates from what users actually want, and everyone is afraid of community backlash, so they don't dare tell the truth." He pointed out that the real "users" are actually the chain operators, who want a set of features that minimize their own legal risk, which often runs counter to Stage 2 requirements. Imagine having to explain in court why you couldn't pause the bridge contract, leading to all user funds being stolen; or why you couldn't prevent North Korea-related entities from holding assets on your platform. The industry consensus is that almost all leading enterprise-operated L2s (like Robinhood, Base) will never evolve to Stage 2.

If the original intent of rollups was to move toward Stage 2, then this L2 vision has failed. Even with L2s' dazzling commercial success, this statement sounds jarring. Ethereum finds itself in an awkward position: it has found product-market fit, but the customers it serves are only using Ethereum "incidentally and symbolically." L2s treat Ethereum as merely an optional settlement layer, not a truly utilized one. So where do we go from here?

The rest of this article will explain the structural misalignment between Ethereum's interests and the L2 market. Although L2s do bring some benefits to Ethereum and ETH, these benefits are not enough to make L2s the focus of Ethereum's R&D efforts. Seeing through the dazzling commercial success of L2s and resisting the temptation to chase hype is difficult but necessary.

Four ways L2s give back to Ethereum—why only "true settlement rent" is viable

L2s create value for Ethereum through four channels:

1. Data availability rent: L2s purchase blob data space. Blobs are essentially fungible commodities with alternatives in the market: external data availability layers or operator-run committees. Switching to alternatives only requires configuration changes, no asset migration, and switching costs are nearly zero. More troubling, Ethereum has publicly committed to continuous scaling—that is itself the goal of the scaling roadmap. A commodity with ever-expanding supply and buyers who can switch at any time cannot generate scarcity rent. The data confirms this. In the 30-day period ending September 7, 2026, Base—the largest L2 by locked value—processed 292 million user operations but paid only about $8,800 in data, proof, and state update fees to Ethereum, roughly $290 per day. In the same period, Arbitrum One paid only about $2,700. By this calculation, Robinhood Chain earns $3–4 million daily but pays Ethereum only a few hundred dollars per day. Moreover, for chains where users cannot freely exit, blobs don't even deliver their designed value. The original purpose of putting data on-chain is to allow anyone to rebuild chain state and exit; operators can achieve reorg resistance by simply posting hashes to L1 at even lower cost. No matter how blob pricing is optimized, the reality remains: if Ethereum promises ample supply, it cannot charge scarcity prices.

2. ETH as gas, capturing monetary premium: This path is entirely voluntary with no binding force. Operators can denominate fees in stablecoins, deploy custom gas tokens, or even subsidize fees to zero—the protocol cannot prevent any of this. So-called "ETH-L2s" are mostly marketing concepts with a weak "ETH as money" effect that cannot generate stable revenue.

Multiple factors continue to weaken this path. First, enterprise operators report financials in USD; ETH received by sequencers is working capital, not long-term reserves. Coinbase has been accused of selling ETH fees generated by Base but refuses to disclose fund flows. Public financial reports show: in Q1–Q2 2026, Coinbase's ETH holdings for investment changed from 150,193 to 150,279. Even though Base generated fees as the largest L2 in the same period, no significant ETH accumulation is visible. Second, L2 teams face constant pressure to issue their own tokens: investors and employees need liquid assets to realize returns; the product itself needs an incentive mechanism controlled by the operator. Third, own tokens need use cases: commercially, tokens without utility have no demand; regulatorily, tokens with actual functions are easier to argue as not securities. The most natural function for L2 tokens is paying sequencer fees, and both Orbit and OP development kits natively support custom gas tokens. Every funding round further lowers the expected return on this path.

3. Settlement authority: Ethereum holds a right that operators cannot revoke, exercised by L2 users. Among the four paths, only this one is a property right relationship, not a simple buyer-seller relationship. Only on this path can Ethereum act as a franchisor, not just an ordinary supplier.

4. Brand licensing: That is, the "secured by Ethereum" label. Ethereum has no trademark and no licensing body; this license is granted to everyone free of charge and irrevocably. For projects that already control traffic distribution, community consensus cannot constrain them. Even if Ethereum wanted to charge for this, the protocol's pricing mechanism is uniform and non-discriminatory, and there is no business development department to specifically engage enterprises like Robinhood. A "license" that cannot be revoked and has no pricing is essentially a gift, not a revenue source.

Data availability rent and ETH network effects are loose and unenforceable; brand licensing is completely non-commercializable. Only when Ethereum performs true final settlement can a structural, endogenous alignment of interests be built, creating a moat. But true settlement capability only takes effect at Stage 2, and enterprise L2 operators subjectively reject Stage 2. This creates an unsolvable misalignment of interests.

Without true settlement, L2s and Ethereum can only be mutually beneficial—but nothing more

Ethereum does receive a small amount of real data availability revenue; massive on-chain users hold and use ETH, bringing some monetary premium; developers, capital, and attention that would otherwise flow to other public chains are attracted; and it gains reputational dividends: a brokerage launching an "Ethereum L2" signals to regulators that Ethereum is infrastructure, not contraband.

However, all these benefits are voluntary, revocable at any time, unpriced, and fragile. This is exactly what "L2s treating Ethereum as an option" means. At most, it amplifies the influence of ETH as an asset, but it cannot amplify Ethereum the chain itself. An option is hugely valuable to the holder; but the option issuer must see what premium it receives—in this case, the premium is zero.

There is another side to this dividend, and it is the core motivation for large general-purpose L2s to adopt the L2 wrapper: regulatory arbitrage. Strip away the marketing, and what remains is a centralized ledger operated by a corporate entity, with pause switches, transaction filtering, and contract upgrade authority. If you ran this system naked, you would be a custodian or money transmitter, clearly visible to regulators. But attach an Ethereum bridge and call it a rollup, and you can leverage social consensus to claim it belongs to Ethereum and is sufficiently decentralized—intermediary regulations seem no longer applicable, yet operators retain all the powers of an intermediary.

A common rebuttal: large L2s choose L2 to save costs. Then ask: save what costs? The cost of achieving decentralization, or the compliance cost of not doing so. Either way, it is essentially regulatory cost savings. Mark Tyneway's post said what everyone was thinking. He later admitted that many institutional L2s "don't match their vibe"—they are clearly not Ethereum, not credibly neutral, not trustless; operators can switch rule versions at any time. The label serves a legal function, not a crypto-economic one. Operators are simply acting on incentives, which is not blameworthy in itself.

Why Stage 2 is the truly critical dividing line

L2BEAT defines Stage 2 with three hard requirements: ① permissionless fraud proof system; ② users have at least a 30-day exit window in the event of a malicious upgrade; ③ the security council can only address errors verifiable on-chain. Notably, this standard does not require a decentralized sequencer. Stage 2 constrains upgrade authority and user escape routes, but does not interfere with transaction ordering rights or fee revenue.

Commercial dimension: Stage 2 creates an asymmetry. The L2 chain itself can leave Ethereum, but it can no longer run away with user assets, because users hold exit rights that operators cannot erase through upgrades. Only with this asymmetry can Ethereum potentially raise "rent" without directly losing customers. Without it, Ethereum is like a supplier on a monthly contract, with customers able to switch to alternatives at any time.

Legal dimension (the author's own area of expertise): Referring to FinCEN's 2019 crypto asset guidance and case law under 18 U.S.C. §1960, the core test is whether the entity has complete independent control over transmitted assets. As long as operators can filter transactions, freeze balances, and unilaterally upgrade bridge contracts without exit windows, no matter how well-written the documentation, they factually possess complete control. Conversely, if permissionless proofs, a 30-day exit window, and security council authority limited to on-chain verifiable bugs are implemented, operators have strong grounds to claim they are merely publishing software, not conducting money transmission. Thus Stage 2 architecture is the strongest technical defense against being classified as a "centralized money service provider wrapped in a rollup shell." This also explains why enterprises actively abandoning Stage 2 is worth deep reflection, not just disappointment.

Governance dimension: L2s that do not support forced transaction inclusion cannot inherit Ethereum's censorship resistance. They only inherit data availability and state roots, which can expose operator wrongdoing but cannot undo its consequences. Censorship occurs at the sequencer, and Ethereum's properties break down at that point.

If Stage 2 became the industry default, "secured by Ethereum" would represent a real legal relationship. The saying "even if Coinbase fails, user assets on Base remain safe" would no longer be just a nice vision. The reality is that Stage 2 has not become mainstream, and almost no major project has implemented it.

Why Stage 2 cannot be implemented, and community pressure cannot solve the fundamental problem

The real cost of Stage 2 for operators is loss of operational optionality. A popular misconception: Stage 2 deprives sequencer fee profits. Not true. Stage 2 restricts upgrades and provides user escape mechanisms, but does not interfere with transaction ordering monopoly. Even a fully centralized, highly profitable sequencer can meet all Stage 2 conditions and keep every cent of fees.

What is truly lost is operational optionality. Regulated financial institutions must be able to execute court orders to freeze accounts, block addresses per OFAC sanctions lists, halt and reverse fraudulent transfers, urgently patch vulnerabilities before funds are drained, and name responsible individuals during regulatory inquiries—not throw up their hands. Stage 2 architecture is designed to eliminate all these capabilities—that is precisely its core purpose.

Let's do a reductio ad absurdum: as long as operators retain the ability to freeze accounts, they do not meet the Stage 2 definition; if they give up freezing ability, corporate legal cannot sign off, and the enterprise cannot fulfill legal obligations. Therefore, for operators holding broker-dealer licenses, money transmission licenses, banking qualifications, or those already publicly listed, the set of business models compatible with Stage 2 is an empty set—not small, but completely nonexistent.

From another angle, suppose you try to persuade Elon Musk to make X Money a Stage 2 rollup instead of a Stage 0 chain disguised as an L2, a permissioned L1 with a small validator set (Hyperliquid model), or a plain database. How would you convince him? He trusts himself to manage user assets; minimal trust mechanisms hold no appeal for him; any of these options works for him. Under the existing legal system, as long as the product is packaged as an L2 or a permissioned L1 with a few "independent validators," even a fully centralized chain faces no fines or jail time; running an unlicensed database naked actually carries legal risk. So blockchain is necessary, but there is no need to choose a true Stage 2 rollup. Users won't vote with their feet either: Robinhood is Stage 0, Hyperliquid runs a permissioned validator set, yet users still use them at scale with great experience. There is no footing for persuasion. True Stage 2 does not solve buyers' real pain points, so no one will pay for it.

Constraints are not limited to licensing. One counterexample worth pondering: Arbitrum has no broker-dealer license, no banking qualification, and is not publicly listed; it is a DAO-governed project and should be best positioned to relinquish intervention authority. But in April 2026, the Arbitrum security council passed an atomic transaction to upgrade the Inbox contract, temporarily implanting a permission function, and initiated cross-chain messages in the name of victims to transfer 30,766 ETH (about $71 million) suspected stolen by the Lazarus Group to a governance wallet, then rolled back the upgrade. Nine of twelve council members approved, with no court subpoena, no notice, no hearing.

I agree with the outcome of recovering these funds, and I do not stand on cypherpunk purism to argue that North Korea-linked entities should keep stolen assets. But the case is highly significant: the hypothetical scenario Mark Tyneway imagined in court became a real Arbitrum event just three months later. No one wants to be the public chain that watches Lazarus walk away with $71 million. And once Stage 2 is implemented, the protocol preemptively gives up this intervention capability.

Real-world constraints are far broader than licensing: as long as a project has reputation and assets to protect, it will fear all kinds of real-world consequences.

The few Stage 2 projects precisely confirm this logic: inscription chains, honeypots specifically built to be attacked, protocol-native experimental projects, and Aztec (which has already launched its Ignition mainnet fully running Stage 2). Aztec proves technical feasibility. But none of these four chains have significant commercial interests requiring real-world protection. Stage 2 only appears where intervention capability is more harmful than beneficial to the operator. For privacy chains, intervention authority is a product flaw; for honeypots, it doesn't matter; but for anyone with licenses, a board, or commercial reputation, this intervention capability is insurance no one wants to cancel.

(Note: Honeypot projects are cybersecurity traps designed to lure and capture hacker attacks.)

This also explains why all community pressure tactics are ineffective: public deadlines, community shaming, difficulty-bomb-like mechanisms that strip blob rights from chains not advancing to Stage 1/2. These proposals all misunderstand the problem as: everyone shares the same goal, but coordination has failed. Coordination problems can be solved by pressure; fundamental conflicts of interest cannot. The "unwillingness" seen externally is essentially legal teams identifying hard compliance constraints and executing their duties diligently.

Four days after Tyneway's post, Vitalik expressed a similar view in a February 3, 2026 blog post (a passage most coverage ignored):

"I have already seen at least one team explicitly state that they may never want to go beyond Stage 1. This is not just a technical issue of ZK-EVM security; their clients' regulatory requirements force them to retain ultimate control. For their clients, this may actually be the right choice."

This is the judgment of the roadmap's own author. The obstacle comes from client regulatory demands; operators meeting those demands is normal market delivery, and no amount of advocacy can change it. He then wrote a conclusion consistent with this article: L2s on this path are not "scaling Ethereum" as envisioned in the original rollup roadmap.

Native rollups cannot save the situation either

Native rollups solve Ethereum's own technical problems, not the problems of customers like Robinhood. Robinhood already has a chain that meets all its business needs, including transaction interception capabilities; proof systems are not its pain point. Even if native rollup technology is perfectly implemented, it cannot force enterprises to adopt it. Robinhood holds the option, and after weighing benefits and costs, a non-native chain disguised as a rollup is more advantageous for it.

Additionally, there is value capture in the middle: Robinhood Chain is built on Arbitrum's commercial platform. In the value flow chain, Arbitrum competes with Ethereum, and Arbitrum also needs to protect its own revenue. Structurally, such chains are closer to L3s, with a large portion of value captured by the middle layer before reaching Ethereum. Building a more sophisticated base layer for a partner that rejects the entire property rights framework amounts to an unpaid subsidy with a roadmap attached.

It is certainly good that independently funded chains are willing to continuously purchase Ethereum data availability services—some revenue is better than none. But we must recognize the nature of this revenue: commodity supplier revenue, with ever-expanding supply and abundant substitutes, deserving only ordinary supplier valuation, not franchisor valuation. Blob pricing itself is not wrong. Ethereum's largest L2 pays only about $290 per day; the product is designed to be cheap, and substitutes are even cheaper. Even if R&D resources are tilted toward serving such customers, the bill amount will not change.

Therefore, directly equating enterprise L2 business metrics with ETH fundamentals is a category error. These metrics describe customer financials; Ethereum can neither enforce performance nor punish customer exit. Market narrative hype can certainly drive ETH price up, but that belongs to market psychology, not fundamental accounting. We cannot restructure Ethereum's economic model or abandon core work that compounds over time just because Robinhood became a hot topic—that would be extremely costly and a step backward.

If not L2s, what should the focus be? The Ethereum Foundation's direction: CROPS

An unexpected lesson from the last cycle: avoiding legal risk does not necessarily require decentralization. Almost no one foresaw this, and the target market for decentralization itself has shrunk. But a "sheltered niche market" still exists, similar to GrapheneOS: user scale is smaller than the mass market pursuing ultimate experience, but these users genuinely need the properties brought by decentralization—not just slogan marketing—and there are almost no other reliable suppliers. A trusted supplier in a niche market beats three competitors fighting over commoditized goods. And this niche market inherently belongs to Ethereum.

CROPS (censorship resistance, open-source freedom, privacy, security) are the core attributes these users actually pay for. People often argue from an emotional perspective that Ethereum should invest resources; this article attempts to analyze from an asset value perspective.

Let's sort out which Ethereum capabilities cannot be replicated by well-capitalized competitors: throughput can be bought; EVM can be forked and copied at any time; data availability is a standardized commodity; L2 development kits can be procured casually.

What truly cannot be replicated: a track record of continuing to build despite state-level attacks. In August 2022, OFAC added Tornado Cash to its sanctions list; in November 2024, the Fifth Circuit's ruling in Van Loon v. Department of the Treasury (a civil lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury after OFAC sanctioned the Tornado Cash privacy mixer) determined that immutable smart contracts are not property of foreign nationals under IEEPA, and sanctions were lifted in March 2025. In August 2025, a jury found Roman Storm guilty of conspiracy, with felony charges unresolved and prosecutors seeking a retrial. Amid the turmoil, development related to privacy and inclusion never stopped. No other smart contract platform has endured comparable trials. Historical track records cannot be simply forked and replicated—to replicate, you must bear the same costs. In contrast, sequencer margins can be replicated by anyone with distribution channels and capital.

The implementation progress of this CROPS roadmap is better than public perception. In February 2026, the Ethereum Foundation launched a dedicated "Harden the L1" workstream, with core EIP-7805 (FOCIL), blob expansion, and statelessness, writing quantifiable censorship resistance metrics into delivery goals—no longer just slogans. Kohaku released an SDK allowing ordinary wallets to integrate RAILGUN mixing and generate independent addresses for each DApp. Aztec Ignition mainnet launched, fully running all Stage 2 features. The L1 gas limit was raised from 30M to 60M in 2025, the first major increase since 2021; the scaling working group targets over 100M. The Pectra upgrade doubled blob throughput in May 2025; Fusaka's PeerDAS increased theoretical blob capacity eightfold in December.

FOCIL will not go live until the Hegota upgrade, and protocol-level inclusion list functionality still awaits a fork; the privacy moat will only be complete when it works out of the box. However, the direction and staffing are already in place, representing substantive change compared to two years ago.

The decisive feature is unilateral deliverability. Every item on the CROPS agenda can be implemented by Ethereum's existing developers without requiring consent or cooperation from any partner. In contrast, every item under the L2 coordination agenda requires operators to voluntarily give up certain authorities; but regulators, boards, legal departments, or simply reputational considerations all require operators to retain those authorities. Under highly constrained resources and attention, choosing a plan that depends on counterparty cooperation over one that can be delivered unilaterally is essentially betting that other actors will act against their own interests. That is merely a hope, yet it still demands engineering R&D costs.

Boundary conditions: what would change this article's conclusions

My entire judgment would be overturned only if any of the following four scenarios occurs:

1. The top five L2s by TVS (total value secured, measuring total assets under protocol guarantees and custodial protection in L2 networks) formally implement Stage 2 without shrinking locked value. Testnet promises or Stage 1 with governance tweets do not count. Requirements: permissionless proof system, 30-day user exit window, security council authority limited to on-chain verifiable bugs, and locked value exceeding $1 billion.
2. The U.S. or EU introduces regulatory rules linking custodial responsibility, asset control, and capital requirements to operators' censorship/freezing capabilities. At that point, Stage 2 would shift from a compliance burden to a compliance advantage, reversing the entire incentive logic overnight. Among the four, this has the highest real-world probability and deserves continuous observation.
3. Interest alignment manifests in cash flow, not public statements. Based on sequencer or native sequencing designs, L2 revenue is substantively tied to L1 proposers; if an L2 defaults, it suffers direct economic loss, not just reputational damage, giving Ethereum genuine enforcement leverage.
4. Building an L2 provides product advantages unavailable elsewhere. Only chains that truly settle to Ethereum can enjoy specific cross-chain experiences and atomic composability. Related R&D exists, but it has not yet made L2 operators willing to give up existing benefits.

Unless any of the above changes occurs, the assumption of interest alignment does not hold, and no amount of promotional rhetoric will help.

L2s have proven that "sequencer + traffic distribution" is an excellent business. But that does not mean it should become Ethereum's business. Real-world evidence shows it cannot become Ethereum's main business: achieving such binding requires operators with commercial interests to protect voluntarily giving up capabilities essential to their survival.

The underlying assumption of the roadmap over the past few years was that everyone would eventually move to Stage 2. Reality proves otherwise, and the reason has nothing to do with courage. L2s hold a free option on Ethereum settlement; holding the option is highly profitable, and there is no incentive to exercise it. Ethereum gave away this option for free. So let's stop treating L2 financials as Ethereum's financials; stop designing protocols for customers who pay only a few hundred dollars a day in service fees.

The good news is that alternatives are already advancing and require no one's permission: L1 scales at its own pace; censorship resistance work has clear timelines; privacy tools are entering ordinary wallets; and production Stage 2 chains prove that technology was never the obstacle. Ethereum should treat L2 operators as welcome tenants, but not fantasize about them becoming partners. That is simply reality, and it is a perfectly viable state.

Appendix: Ethereum community member Ryan Berckmans' comment on this article:

Great article, but I disagree with Gabe's core conclusion. To briefly summarize his core view: bearish on the current L1+L2 model, especially bearish on Ethereum (ETH). Here is my bullish rebuttal logic:

The main reason ETH's price is currently depressed is that the vast majority of investors believe Ethereum L1 will ultimately fail to achieve global dominance, not the various other reasons circulating in the market.

But most investors are wrong, or have not seen reality clearly: Ethereum L1 will eventually become the global dominant layer, and ETH's market cap will reach trillions of dollars. Here's why:

Gabe, myself, and many others share a consensus: for institutions like Coinbase and Robinhood, building L2s is an excellent choice, and the L2 sector will continue to expand rapidly—even those with opposing views admit this.

• The continued explosion of L2s combined with L1's own growth will create the following future landscape:
• L2s expand rapidly;
• L1 also grows rapidly;
• L1 maintains its roughly two-thirds share of application capital market for years;
• L1 firmly holds nearly 99% market position as the underlying settlement layer for L2s. This logic does not dwell on which development stage L2s are in or how much fees they pay to L1; the core focus is: L1 is the structural hub of the entire system;
• In the future, mature and reliable L2 projects will emerge in large numbers, naturally further consolidating L1's global hub position;
• More L2 projects comparable in scale to Base and Robinhood will emerge, including many less-discussed projects: Sony's Sonieum, ADI Chain launched by a major Dubai enterprise, Zksync (with a consortium of U.S. banks and other institutions advancing deployment). When L1 carries trillions of dollars in application capital, ETH's value will naturally rise, pushing its market cap toward the trillion-dollar level.

That is my argument for why Ethereum L1 will achieve global dominance.

"Wait, you only said the Ethereum ecosystem will win, but you didn't explain why that means the ETH token will win."

Crypto friend, if you cannot see that the Ethereum ecosystem developing to such a grand scale will inevitably benefit the ETH token, then I have nothing more to say.