Original Title: How L1 and L2s Can Build the Strongest Possible Ethereum

Original Authors: Josh Rudolf, Julian Ma, Josh Stark, Ethereum Foundation

Original Translation: Chopper, Foresight News

The Ethereum Foundation Platform team’s ultimate goal is to promote Ethereum as a unified, collaborative system to achieve scalable expansion, allowing all users to use it with confidence.

This article aims to share our views on the relationship between L1 and L2, explain the roles of each layer, and how we (as an ecosystem) can leverage the advantages of L1 and L2 to create the most attractive platform for all users.

Some of these points are already clear, while others require ongoing experimentation and iteration with the community and users to validate.

TL;DR

Goal: All individual and institutional users should have clear pathways to utilize, expand, and benefit from Ethereum’s core attributes.

The best way to achieve this is to fully utilize each layer’s unique features, strengthen Ethereum’s core attributes, and deliver meaningful value to end users through these attributes.

As Ethereum’s ecosystem develops, the roles of each layer are also evolving:

Past: L2’s primary mission was to help scale Ethereum, followed by providing differentiation and customization options. Scalability was the key focus.

Now: L2’s primary mission is to provide differentiated features, services, customization options, marketing strategies, and control areas while achieving scalability. Currently, the main drivers are differentiation, control, and innovation.

· L1 serves as a truly permissionless, highly resilient global settlement, shared state, liquidity, and DeFi hub. A strong, scalable L1 that does not compromise on CROPS (Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, Security) provides a better foundation for L2.

· L2 offers valuable new features, customization, and control to develop its own on-chain economy, while extending Ethereum’s core attributes to more users. A robust L2 network strengthens the Ethereum ecosystem and its focus.

L2 covers all aspects, establishing differentiated relationships with L1 based on needs:

· Those seeking close integration with L1 should strive for composability, full interoperability, shared liquidity, and mechanisms like native Rollups.

· L2s with various business models or technical expertise will continue to play important roles in the ecosystem, offering capabilities beyond what L1 can provide.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) will continue to develop underlying technologies to seamlessly extend L1’s native features through L2, ensuring cross-layer and cross-chain liquidity and asset interoperability; meanwhile, L2s must be transparent and clearly disclose their security attributes and verification standards.

In short, both play important roles, and their words and actions must align.

Introduction

Over the past five years, a large L2 ecosystem has emerged around Ethereum L1. Various L2s inherit different native features of Ethereum: some fully replicate decentralized architecture (like Stage 2 Rollup), some inherit partial security features (like Validium, Privium), and some only support general EVM standards (not true L2s).

Many chains are still in development, often starting as independent chains and gradually integrating deeply into the Ethereum L1 ecosystem. It’s time for the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the broader Ethereum community to update our understanding of the relationship between L1 and L2 networks. The last update was about five years ago, when a roadmap centered on Rollups was first proposed as a way to scale Ethereum.

Since then, much has changed. Technologies enabling L2s to share Ethereum’s security and liquidity and to interoperate have matured; their differentiation and user value are increasingly evident; L2s have grown into independent communities and ecosystems; and the L1 scaling roadmap has evolved to become clearer.

The Ethereum ecosystem needs to recognize these changes and learn from past successes and failures.

In recent months, the future development direction of the L1 and L2 relationship has become clearer:

· A thriving Ethereum ecosystem must be built on a strong L1 foundation.

· Ethereum L1 will achieve order-of-magnitude expansion while maintaining the highest security and decentralization, continuing as the core of on-chain economy and DeFi.

· An ecosystem of independent, interoperable L2 chains will emerge, offering higher customization, control, and features that L1 cannot provide. These L2 chains choose to root in the Ethereum ecosystem because it is the best choice for their users, communities, or enterprises.

· L2 chains will compete and cooperate to provide a variety of specialized block space, services, and assets.

This article aims to explain in more detail the vision of L1 and L2 coexistence and to outline pathways for establishing mutually beneficial relationships between Ethereum’s L1 and any chains that want to root and become part of the ecosystem.

What roles do L1 and L2 play, and how do they work together?

Ethereum L1 is the world’s top programmable blockchain, unmatched in user adoption, developer ecosystem, decentralization, resilience, and foundational stability. It is the core of the DeFi ecosystem, aggregating the deepest liquidity across the network. Ethereum L1 now has a clear scaling path while maintaining decentralization and security. Thanks to the joint efforts of many teams within the Ethereum ecosystem, zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology has advanced far beyond expectations.

In the coming years, we will be able to significantly increase Ethereum L1’s capacity while upholding its core values.

Meanwhile, no single public chain can support the diverse on-chain economic needs globally. Even if Ethereum remains dominant and its capacity expands by 1,000 times, many different chains will still exist, because they offer specialized and customized services that L1 cannot provide:

· Specialized for specific applications or use cases

· Non-EVM functionalities

· Additional privacy protections

· Pricing mechanisms or transaction logic

· Ultra-low latency or other ordering features

· Extreme scalability features unmatched by L1

· Specialized economies, market entry strategies, and growth models

· Modular designs to meet compliance or other business needs

· Other innovations or improvements that can iterate and deliver faster than L1

……

This creates opportunities for mutually beneficial relationships between L1 and L2, allowing both to focus on their complementary roles.

Why would other independent public chains be willing to become Ethereum’s L2?

· Cost-effectiveness. Compared to independent base-layer chains, L2 can replicate Ethereum’s top security and decentralization at a very low cost; setting up global decentralized validation nodes is expensive, time-consuming, and difficult. L2 can transfer this responsibility to Ethereum L1, paying as needed without bearing high fixed setup costs.

· Users and developers. Interoperating with the largest L1 and L2 clusters enables access to more users and developers; with advancements in zero-knowledge proofs, real-time proofs, faster finality on L1, L2 settlement, and mature proxy infrastructure, interoperability and cross-chain user experience will accelerate.

· Interoperability. If designed properly, L2 can securely access L1 assets, DeFi liquidity, user accounts, and services like oracles and ENS on L1.

· Marketing and branding: As part of the Ethereum ecosystem, they can benefit from Ethereum’s reputation, security record, and regulatory recognition.

What can Ethereum L1 gain from this? Based on our experience and discussions with stakeholders in the ecosystem, we believe positioning Ethereum L1 at the core of the growing L2 network can strengthen Ethereum and ETH’s unique position in on-chain economy:

· Creating demand for ETH and providing trust-minimized, secure bridging services between ETH and other assets. ETH functions as a store of value and currency within the Ethereum network.

· Expanding Ethereum’s network effects (e.g., EVM, developer education, tools, user onboarding, and interoperability between L2s)

· Reinforcing Ethereum’s role as the core of multi-chain ecosystems and the main settlement and liquidity layer for on-chain economies

· Providing broader business development, growth, and marketing support for Ethereum.

· L2s help realize Ethereum’s core vision. As distributed engines of Ethereum’s core attributes (security, resilience, stability), they maximize the number of users who can sustainably derive value from Ethereum.

The Ethereum ecosystem should not take these advantages for granted. Some are still subject to debate within the community or require long-term validation through experimentation, measurement, and analysis. Ultimately, the relationship between L1 and L2 must be mutually beneficial to succeed. Over the past five years, this relationship has achieved many milestones and laid a crucial foundation for the future.

What does this mean for the future of L2 development?

What does this new vision mean for L2 users, their teams, and communities?

Our recommendations are as follows:

· L2 should focus on strategies that complement L1 and achieve platform differentiation. Many L2s have successfully moved toward this vision by innovating features, targeting specific use cases (like application chains), offering new distribution methods, or adopting novel marketing strategies. This has helped them build unique communities and extend Ethereum’s features to millions of new users.

· L2s should have the freedom to realize differentiation in various ways according to their own visions. We have already seen differentiation in scalability, trustlessness, privacy, enterprise compliance, industry sectors, communities, and a series of technological innovations.

· L2s can choose to extend all or part of Ethereum’s attributes based on their goals. But they should ensure users can easily understand what security properties they provide and do not provide. L2s committed to minimizing trust should at least reach Stage 1 and pass “exit” tests, meaning users can safely exit to L1 even if malicious actors or security committees fail.

L2s that aim to closely inherit L1’s properties should develop in these directions:

1. Achieve Stage 2;

2. Synchronize composability;

3. Become native Rollups.

· L2 should continue to build broader interoperability and shared liquidity mechanisms to strengthen the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

· L2 should operate transparently, clearly communicating their security attributes and relationship with L1’s security layer.

How is the Ethereum Foundation contributing to building this world?

To realize the vision of L1<>L2 relationships, the Ethereum Foundation is actively working on:

· Extending L1 and blob layers without sacrificing decentralization. Currently, blob utilization is only about 30%, leaving huge room for expansion. We can confidently further expand blobs as needed.

· Supporting L2s that focus on privacy, security, and trustlessness.

· Led by Josh Rudolf, the Platform team aims to improve overall Ethereum platform performance and serve as an interface between L2 and the core protocol roadmap.

· Increasing L1 liquidity to make it easier for L2s to access liquidity (faster finality, withdrawals, deposits).

· Working closely with L2 teams to understand their needs, prioritize protocol development, and clarify the relationship between L1 and L2. To ensure this relationship functions effectively, we need to identify what works well, what needs improvement, and collaborate to strengthen the value proposition of being part of the Ethereum ecosystem.

· Investing in R&D to realize “Native Rollup” technology, enabling L1 to fully and trustlessly verify L2 chains, achieving synchronized composability and secure interoperability.

· Collaborating with L2Beat and other organizations to monitor and verify L2 security features. We must rigorously and honestly assess L2 characteristics and their relation to L1 security to help users and developers make informed choices.

· Addressing the main fragmentation issue in multi-chain ecosystems. We will work with the ecosystem—including various chains, wallets, and infrastructure providers—to develop better interoperability solutions, tackling user experience and developer platform fragmentation. Now, with a clearer understanding of the L1-L2 relationship, we can begin to address the fragmentation of Ethereum’s narrative.

We aim to jointly build a global, permissionless on-chain economy and provide the best platform for all users.

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