After being questioned by Vitalik, L2s are collectively saying goodbye to the "cheap" era

Original Title: "After Being 'Backstabbed' by Vitalik, How Will L2s Respond to Urgently Shedding the 'Cheap' Label?"

Original Author: Jae, PANews

When a founder questions their own ecosystem, a debate on the essence of scalability, decentralization progress, and future dominance is pushing L2 to a crossroads.

With Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sharply questioning the scalability roadmap, the L2 ecosystem is undergoing a profound "identity crisis." Leaders of projects such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Starknet, and Base have successively spoken out, engaging in a fierce debate on L2's value proposition, business model, and ecosystem philosophy.

Optimism: Acknowledging Engineering Hurdles, Embracing Modular Transformation

As a pioneer in the Optimism Rollup field, Optimism's response appears pragmatic yet optimistic, with its co-founder Karl Floersch admitting that he is willing to embrace the challenge of building a "Full-spectrum Decentralization" modular L2 stack.

Although Optimism has always been a staunch advocate of decentralized faith, Floersch did not shy away from the harsh reality. He acknowledged that OP-type L2 still faces three major engineering pain points to achieve full decentralization:

1. Long withdrawal periods: The current fraud proof mechanism still requires a 7-day challenge period, leading to low capital efficiency and a poor user experience.

2. Stage 2 proof system is not ready: The so-called "Stage 2 proof system" in the market is not yet sufficient to securely custody billions of dollars in assets without full human intervention.

3. Lack of cross-chain application development tools: Developers lack standardized tools to manage multi-chain applications, making ecosystem integration challenging.

Optimism's choice is "deep modularity." Floersch supports Vitalik's emphasis on the native Rollup precompile solution and plans to integrate it into the OP Stack. This is equivalent to providing a "plug-and-play" base for all projects on the Superchain, inheriting Ethereum mainnet security at a lower cost.

For Optimism, the way forward is no longer just to provide an execution environment, but to build a highly interoperable standardized protocol specification. In this way, Optimism's competitive barrier will shift from gas costs to developer experience and network effects, and its role will transition from being a "scaling solution provider" to an "ecosystem standard setter."

Arbitrum: Firmly Defending Scaling Sovereignty, Warning of "Institutional Migration" Risk

If Optimism is seen as the moderate reformist, then Arbitrum is the uncompromising establishment.

Goldfeder's firm commitment to maintaining scaling as the lifeblood of L2 is a stark contrast to the description of L2's scaling function as "downgraded."

He emphasizes that Arbitrum's choice of Ethereum as the settlement layer is based on its extremely high security and reasonable settlement costs. This is a business-led optimal choice, not a technological dependency.

Goldfeder also countered the argument that "L1 scaling can replace L2." During peak transaction times, Arbitrum and Base have achieved throughput of over 1,000 TPS (transactions per second), while the Ethereum mainnet was only in the double digits.

Therefore, even if the mainnet scales, its nature as a general-purpose settlement layer makes it difficult for Ethereum to meet the demands for ultimate concurrency in social, gaming, high-frequency trading, and other application scenarios.

More compelling is Goldfeder's warning of "institutional migration." He points out that many institutions choose L2 due to the combination of Ethereum's security backing and L2's flexibility. If the symbiotic relationship between the two is broken, these institutions, in pursuit of performance sovereignty, are highly likely to migrate to independent L1 or other ecosystems.

This has transcended technical debates and risen to the level of ecosystem competition. Arbitrum's implication is: to deny the value of L2 scaling is to weaken Ethereum's overall attractiveness.

Base: Shedding the Cheap Ethereum Label, Pursuing Application Differentiation

Incubated by Coinbase, Base provides a unique perspective connecting Web2 and Web3, with co-founder Jesse Pollak agreeing with Vitalik's view: L2 cannot just be "cheaper Ethereum."

As the mainnet Gas fees continue to decrease, this commoditized price war has lost its strategic significance. Base will delve deep into differentiated functionality to build moats, especially in user experience and product entry barriers.

1. Eliminate Mnemonics: Base is vigorously promoting the application of account abstraction and related standards, allowing users to manage wallets directly through FaceID or TouchID, eliminating the reliance on mnemonics, smoothing the biggest usability hurdle of Web3, a user experience that cannot be achieved solely through L1 base-layer scaling.

2. Deeply Integrate Privacy Features: Targeting enterprise and sensitive applications, integrate lighter and more efficient privacy computing tools, allowing users to enjoy blockchain transparency while effectively protecting personal data.

3. Incubate Consumer Applications: Through consumer-facing application scenarios such as social, gaming, and content creation, transform Base into a service layer for end users.

Overall, Base's strategic positioning is to become the "retail front end" of Web3, while Ethereum comfortably plays the "settlement backend."

Although more focused on the application layer, Base has not overlooked the security of the underlying layer. Pollak stated that Base is striving towards "Stage 2," aiming to reduce reliance on centralized sequencers.

The Ethereum Ecosystem Enters an Adjustment Period, L2 Moves Toward Functional Diversification

Interestingly, among the responses, StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson's attitude is the most aloof, even carrying a somewhat prophetic tone. He hinted that a native L2 like Starknet based on ZK (Zero-Knowledge Proof) technology inherently aligns with Vitalik's description of a "specialized execution environment."

Ben-Sasson's view reveals the trend of the L2 ecosystem transitioning to a "multi-functional hub." While Optimistic Rollup is still struggling with decentralized proofs, ZK-Rollup is ready to take on complex computational demands that the mainnet cannot handle.

The Ethereum ecosystem will also undergo a more profound division of labor:

· L1: Aims to enhance its own capabilities by increasing the Gas limit and optimizing data availability, providing a solid underlying security foundation for the entire ecosystem.

· L2: Farewell to "homogeneous" competition, evolving from a simple "low-cost scaling solution" to a "specialized environment" serving specific technical and business needs, such as large-scale full-chain games, complex logic computations, high-performance transactions, etc. These use cases, even if technically feasible on L1, cannot generate economic benefits.

This debate marks a major adjustment in the Ethereum ecosystem, as Vitalik's questioning will force the entire L2 track to undergo a value reassessment.

Ethereum is transitioning from a "master-slave structure" to a multi-polar coexistence, functionally complementary matrix system. The era of homogeneous expansion is drawing to a close, and the era of differentiated innovation may have already arrived.

For investors and developers, the evaluation criteria for L2 are also undergoing a qualitative change: whoever can create the "uniqueness" that the mainnet cannot provide will hold the ticket for the next five years.

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