The enemy is in Honnoji. Just when Vitalik was looking forward to winning the Nobel Prize in Economics, one of the three pillars of Ethereum (uni, aave, Usdc) dealt a blow to Ethereum and officially announced its own app chain.

The question is, so what? The key here is the competition between two lines. One line is what V God envisioned. The main TVLs of big apps are all in L1, and branches are opened in various L2s, so that ETH L1 can still obtain transaction fees.

But the uni route is that I make an l2 myself to do the main exchange.

Both solutions face the problem of cross-chain exchange. It seems that uni's OP superchain solution is more convenient to solve. However, Vitalik's cross-L1/L2 solution has no solution yet.

What went wrong? I think there are two key design errors or misprioritizations:

The first is unfair pricing. The difference in gas fees between Ethereum L1 app and L2 is so huge. It’s like the rent in Beijing is 50,000 yuan, and the rent in Chengdu is 500 yuan. If you were given a choice, where would you start a company?

The second is that interoperability started too late and there is no standard. The interoperability standard should have been set by L1 and implemented by everyone, so there wouldn't be so many problems. Now L2 is doing its own interoperability.

What does the future hold?

Other big apps may have the urge to open their own chains, after all, the rent difference is too big. Especially aave, which is actually more suitable for cross-chain than uni.