The Ethereum mainnet focuses on security and decentralization, thus delegating performance expansion tasks to Layer 2 scaling.
After establishing this development approach, Ethereum's Layer 2 scaling began to flourish. Initially, Layer 2 scaling had certain technical barriers, but later, both OP Rollup and zk Rollup teams launched mature development packages, which significantly lowered the development threshold.
According to the latest data from l2beat.com, there are now dozens of Layer 2 scalings in the Ethereum ecosystem. Moreover, new Layer 2 scalings continue to emerge.
How is the ecosystem progressing on these Layer 2 scalings?
For a long early period, Arbitrum's TVL consistently ranked first in the Layer 2 ecosystem. Last year, with the rise of the AI agent track, Base's TVL began to catch up and surpass others, riding the AI agent wave. Now, with the significant drop in AI agent token prices, Arbitrum's TVL has again returned to the top position.
The continuous changes in TVL rankings indicate that no project in this track has yet gained a clear advantage. Everyone is continuously competing to attract limited ecosystem projects.
With decreasing technical barriers for Layer 2 scalings and TVL rankings potentially changing at any time, one cannot help but wonder: Do Layer 2 scalings have any moat? Is there any service or value that one Layer 2 scaling provides that others do not?
Initially, I was more optimistic about zk-based Layer 2 scalings, as they theoretically could provide better security. However, developments over the years have shown that this characteristic does not seem to distinctly differentiate zk systems from OP systems.
Could this be because Ethereum ultimately provides security guarantees, making zk's security advantages less urgent? Additionally, many high-security projects in the crypto ecosystem originally operated on the mainnet, and even if some are on Layer 2 scalings, their importance is not that significant?
Moreover, early Layer 2 scalings were focused on who had lower fees and faster transactions.
But can this really be considered a barrier?
Since security can be guaranteed by Ethereum, to reduce fees and increase speed, Layer 2 scalings could even operate in a completely centralized manner to minimize costs and maximize speed in extreme cases.
Even without such extreme measures, technological advancements make these difficult to establish as barriers. For instance, Base recently claimed to improve transaction efficiency to within 200 ms. The recently popular MegaETH even claims to improve transaction speeds to the millions.
If these cannot create differentiation for Layer 2 scalings, then what can?
I believe Tencent's approach to establishing ecosystem interconnectivity might be a path, and Base's efforts in recent years seem to be focused on building interconnectivity between ecosystem projects.
A notable phenomenon is that Base has launched several famous projects or trendy tokens within certain ecosystem projects (like Farcaster) and then spread them to other projects in the ecosystem. This has been true from early meme coins to later three-layer expansions and recently Clanker.
If this ecosystem interconnectivity can be established, perhaps Base can create its own differentiation in Layer 2 scaling competition.
However, Base's biggest problem is its lack of a token, unable to empower ecosystem value to a token or transfer such benefits to others. It's like a great company that hasn't gone public, where outsiders can only watch.
But if this ecosystem interconnectivity cannot be established, how will Layer 2 scaling differentiation be demonstrated? If such differentiation cannot be shown, might Layer 2 scalings themselves be a track with a very poor business model, not worth investing in?
As Duan Yongping wrote in his book: Some industries (like aviation) find it difficult to have a good business model and establish differentiated competition, making those industries not worth investing in. He would hardly even look at such industries.
