5 years of refinement: The Ethereum Foundation updates the Layer 1 and Layer 2 ecosystem positioning and high-stage steering.
By Josh Rudolf, Julian Ma, and Josh Stark
Translated by Chopper, Foresight Information
The Ethereum Foundation’s Platform crew has one final objective: to scale Ethereum as a unified coordination system so that every one customers can depend on it with confidence. This text shares our perspective on the relationship between Layer 1 (L1) and Layer 2 (L2), clarifies the position of every layer, and explains how we—as an ecosystem—can leverage the strengths of each L1 and L2 to construct the most compelling platform for all customers. Some facets of this imaginative and prescient are already clear; others will likely be validated by ongoing experimentation and iteration with the neighborhood and customers.
TL;DR
Purpose: Each particular person and institutional person ought to have a transparent path to leverage, prolong, and profit from Ethereum’s core properties. The easiest way to obtain that is to totally make the most of the distinctive capabilities of every layer—reinforcing Ethereum’s core properties and delivering significant worth to finish customers by them.
As the Ethereum ecosystem evolves, so do the roles of every layer:
- Previous: L2’s main mission was to scale Ethereum; secondary targets included differentiation and customization. Scalability was paramount.
- Current: L2’s main mission is to scale *whereas* delivering differentiated options, providers, customization, go-to-market methods, and management. As we speak, the largest drivers are differentiation, management, and innovation.
- L1 serves as the really permissionless, globally resilient settlement, shared-state, liquidity, and DeFi hub. A strong, scalable L1—one which preserves CROPS (Censorship Resistance, Openness, Privateness, Safety)—gives a stronger basis for L2s.
- L2s ship precious new performance, customization, and management to develop their very own onchain economies, whereas extending Ethereum’s core properties to extra customers. Sturdy L2 networks reinforce the broader Ethereum ecosystem—and its gravitational middle.
L2s span the full spectrum, establishing differentiated relationships with L1 primarily based on their particular wants:
- L2s looking for the tightest attainable integration with L1 ought to attempt for synchronous composability, full interoperability, shared liquidity, and native Rollup mechanisms.
- L2s with numerous enterprise fashions or technical experience will proceed taking part in very important roles in the ecosystem, every delivering specialised capabilities past L1’s attain.
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) will proceed growing foundational applied sciences to assist L2s seamlessly prolong L1-native properties and securely bridge cross-layer and cross-chain liquidity and property. At the identical time, EF requires L2s to function transparently—clearly disclosing their safety properties and verification requirements. Briefly, either side play important roles—and should stroll the speak.
Introduction
Over the previous 5 years, an unlimited L2 ecosystem has grown round Ethereum’s L1. These L2s inherit totally different native properties from Ethereum: some totally replicate its decentralized structure (e.g., Stage 2 Rollups); others inherit solely partial safety properties (e.g., Validium, Prividium); and some merely adjust to generic EVM requirements (and will not be L2s in any respect). Many chains stay below growth, typically launching as unbiased chains earlier than progressively deepening their integration into Ethereum’s L1 ecosystem.
It’s now time for the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the broader Ethereum ecosystem to replace our understanding of the relationship between L1 and L2 networks. The final main replace occurred roughly 5 years in the past, when the rollup-centric roadmap was first proposed as Ethereum’s scaling path.
Since then, a lot has modified. Applied sciences enabling L2s to share Ethereum’s safety and liquidity—and interoperate with it—have matured considerably. L2 differentiation and person worth have turn into more and more pronounced. L2s themselves have grown and matured, cultivating unbiased communities and ecosystems. In the meantime, Ethereum’s L1 scaling roadmap has additionally advanced and turn into clearer. The Ethereum ecosystem should acknowledge these shifts—and study from each previous successes and failures.
Over the previous a number of months, the future course of the relationship between Ethereum’s L1 and L2 has come into sharper focus:
- A thriving Ethereum ecosystem should relaxation on a powerful L1 basis.
- Ethereum’s L1 will scale by orders of magnitude whereas preserving its highest ranges of safety and decentralization—persevering with to function the core of the onchain financial system and the coronary heart of DeFi.
- A future ecosystem will consist of unbiased but interoperable L2 chains providing increased levels of customization, management, and performance than L1 alone can present. These L2s select to root themselves in the Ethereum ecosystem as a result of it represents the most suitable option for his or her customers, communities, or companies.
- L2s compete *and* cooperate to ship a variety of specialised blockspace, providers, and property.
This text elaborates additional on this symbiotic L1–L2 imaginative and prescient and outlines a path towards mutually reinforcing relationships between Ethereum’s L1 and any chain looking for to root itself inside—and turn into half of—the ecosystem.
What roles do L1 and L2 play—and how do they work collectively?
Ethereum L1 is the world’s main programmable blockchain—unmatched at the moment in person adoption, developer ecosystem, decentralization, resilience, and foundational robustness. It’s the core of the DeFi ecosystem and hosts the deepest liquidity in the community.
Ethereum L1 now has a transparent scaling path that preserves decentralization and safety. Thanks to the collective efforts of many groups throughout the ecosystem, zero-data (ZK) proof expertise has superior far quicker than anticipated. In the coming years, we’ll scale Ethereum L1’s capability by a number of orders of magnitude—with out compromising its core values.
At the identical time, no single public blockchain can accommodate the full range of world onchain financial demand. Even when Ethereum stays dominant and scales 1,000x, many distinct chains will nonetheless exist—as a result of they provide specialised and personalized providers that L1 merely can’t match:
- Specialization for particular functions or use circumstances
- Non-EVM performance
- Further privateness ensures
- Customized pricing mechanisms or transaction inclusion logic
- Extremely-low latency or different ordering traits
- Options requiring excessive scalability past L1’s capability
- Specialised economies, market-entry methods, and development fashions
- Modular design to meet compliance or different enterprise necessities
- Different enhancements or improvements that may iterate and ship quicker than L1
- …
This creates a possibility for a mutually useful L1–L2 relationship—the place every layer focuses on complementary roles.
Why would different unbiased public chains select to turn into Ethereum L2s?
- Low price. In contrast to constructing an unbiased base-layer public chain, turning into an L2 replicates Ethereum’s high-tier safety and decentralization at extraordinarily low overhead. Constructing a globally distributed, decentralized validator set is dear, time-consuming, and technically demanding. L2s can outsource this duty to Ethereum L1—paying solely as wanted, with out massive fastened infrastructure prices.
- Customers and builders. Interoperating with the largest L1 and L2 cluster grants entry to extra customers and builders. With maturing ZK proofs, actual-time proving, quicker L1 finality and L2 settlement, and proxy infrastructure, interoperability and cross-chain UX are accelerating quickly.
- Interoperability. Properly-designed L2s can securely entry L1 property and DeFi liquidity, L1 person accounts, and any L1 service—comparable to oracles or ENS.
- Advertising: Being half of the Ethereum ecosystem confers model and reputational benefits. Ethereum boasts the strongest repute, safety monitor file, and regulatory recognition amongst all L1s.
What does Ethereum L1 acquire? Based mostly on our expertise and discussions with ecosystem stakeholders, we consider positioning Ethereum L1 at the middle of a rising L2 community reinforces Ethereum’s and ETH’s distinctive position in the onchain financial system:
- Creating demand for ETH—and offering belief-minimized, safe bridging between ETH and different property. ETH serves concurrently as retailer of worth, forex, and extra inside the Ethereum community.
- Extending Ethereum’s community results (e.g., EVM, developer training, developer tooling, person onboarding, and interoperability throughout L2s)
- Solidifying Ethereum’s place as the core of the multi-chain ecosystem—and the main settlement and liquidity layer for the onchain financial system
- Offering Ethereum with broader enterprise growth, development, and advertising and marketing assist
- L2s advance Ethereum’s core imaginative and prescient. As distributed engines of Ethereum’s core properties—safety, resilience, and stability—they maximize the quantity of customers who sustainably seize worth from Ethereum.
The Ethereum ecosystem should not take these benefits with no consideration. Some stay contested inside the neighborhood—or are lengthy-time period hypotheses requiring empirical validation by experimentation, measurement, and evaluation. In the end, the L1–L2 relationship should be mutually useful to succeed. Over the previous 5 years, this relationship has achieved a lot—and laid vital groundwork for the future.
What does this imply for the future of L2s?
What does this new imaginative and prescient imply for L2 customers, their groups, and their communities?
Listed below are our suggestions:
- L2s ought to focus strategically on complementing L1 and attaining platform differentiation. Many L2s have already efficiently pursued this imaginative and prescient—by revolutionary options, software-particular chains, novel distribution strategies, or distinctive go-to-market methods. This has helped them domesticate distinctive communities and prolong Ethereum’s properties to thousands and thousands of new customers.
- L2s ought to retain the freedom to differentiate in numerous methods, in accordance to their very own imaginative and prescient. We’ve already seen differentiation emerge throughout scalability, trustlessness, privateness, enterprise compliance, business focus, neighborhood, and a broad spectrum of technical improvements.
- L2s might select to prolong all—or just some—of Ethereum’s properties. However they need to guarantee customers can simply perceive which safety properties they do (and don’t) present. Belief-minimized L2s ought to—at minimal—obtain Stage 1 and cross the “exit take a look at”: even in the presence of malicious operators or a failed safety council, customers should be in a position to exit safely to L1. L2s aiming for max alignment with L1—and full inheritance of its properties—ought to pursue: 1) Stage 2; 2) synchronous composability; and 3) native Rollup standing.
- L2s ought to proceed constructing broader interoperability and shared liquidity mechanisms—to strengthen the total Ethereum ecosystem.
- L2s ought to proceed working transparently—clearly speaking their safety properties and their relationship to L1’s safety layer.
What’s the Ethereum Foundation doing to construct this world?
To appreciate this L1<>L2 imaginative and prescient, the Ethereum Foundation is actively advancing the following initiatives:
- We’re dedicated to scaling each L1 and blobs—with out sacrificing decentralization. Blob utilization at the moment sits at ~30%, leaving monumental headroom; we are able to confidently scale blobs additional as wanted.
- We offer focused assist to L2s with present or rising experience—or ambitions—in privateness, safety, and trustlessness.
- Josh Rudolf leads the Platform crew, whose mission is to enhance Ethereum’s total platform efficiency—and function the interface between L2s and the core protocol roadmap.
- We’re enhancing L1 liquidity to make it simpler for L2s to entry liquidity (quicker finality, withdrawals, and deposits).
- We collaborate intently with L2 groups to perceive their wants—and replicate these wants in protocol priorities—whereas clarifying the L1–L2 relationship. To make sure this relationship features successfully, we want to establish what works—and what doesn’t—and co-develop options. Our constant objective is to make clear and reinforce the worth proposition of being half of the Ethereum ecosystem.
- We’re investing in R&D to understand “native Rollup” expertise: L2s that L1 can totally and trustlessly confirm—enabling synchronous composability and safe interoperability.
- We work intently with L2Beat and different organizations to monitor and confirm L2 safety properties. We should rigorously and truthfully assess L2 properties—and their diploma of alignment with L1 safety—so customers and builders could make knowledgeable choices.
- We handle the fundamental disadvantage of multi-chain ecosystems: fragmentation. We’re partnering throughout the ecosystem—together with chains, wallets, and infrastructure suppliers—to construct higher interoperability options that resolve fragmented person experiences and fragmented developer platforms. Now that the L1–L2 relationship is clearer, we are able to start tackling the fragmentation of Ethereum’s narrative itself.
Collectively, we’ll construct a worldwide, permissionless onchain financial system—and ship the finest platform for all customers.
