Editor's note:
While the Bitcoin inscription wave and the general rise of Solana tokens have not yet receded, the performance of Ethereum and its ecology is not satisfactory. In an article published by Bankless on December 22, Bankless guest author Viktor Bunin discussed and predicted the future of Ethereum and L2.
He believes that on the one hand, the number of users of the Ethereum blockchain will decrease, and the relationship between Ethereum, the Ethereum ecosystem, and end users may become like a matryoshka doll, so that the Ethereum ecosystem will no longer have a single overall narrative; on the other hand, On the one hand, the entire Rollup ecosystem will maintain the most important social principles of Ethereum - decentralization, trusted neutrality, and permissionless access and innovation. At the same time, the Ethereum blockchain will become an established, taken-for-granted and Get a solid foundation of support. BlockBeats compiles the original text as follows:
There has been a lot of excitement on Twitter in the Bitcoin and Solana communities lately, driven by hype around fundamental improvements, fee increases, and rising numbers for tokens, etc. But the Ethereum community, the center of gravity for cryptocurrency adoption and innovation, can seem a bit more sober at times. This got me thinking, is it just that the numbers arenât going up?
I think there is a deeper reason: the Ethereum blockchain is transitioning from B2C (execution) to B2B (settlement). This is the known technical outcome of Ethereumâs endgame, but what does it mean for Ethereumâs social layer and community? I havenât seen much written about this, so Iâll try to unpack the topic here.
In the long run, will the number of users of the Ethereum blockchain increase or decrease from today? I think it will decrease. L2 already consumes up to 20% of Ethereum's gas, and I expect this percentage to continue to rise in the coming years, even as developments like EIP-4844 and Full Danksharding significantly reduce the cost of settling Rollups to Ethereum. Fewer end users of the Ethereum blockchain means that relatively fewer people will be part of the Ethereum community.
Instead, peopleâs identities will become nested, with them primarily tied to the user-facing components they interact with, such as networks like Base, Arbitrum One, or Polygon zkEVM. On Twitter, you can see this today â the communities for the aforementioned L2s are growing rapidly, but theyâre primarily focused on their respective chains, not Ethereum more broadly.
This reality makes it harder for people, especially critics, to understand Ethereum, as it is no longer a single chain and community, but an ecosystem of chains and communities. Ironically, this has also made it difficult for people to understand the Cosmos community for many years.
This change also means that, by definition, there is no longer a single overarching narrative for the Ethereum ecosystem. The diversity of communities and perspectives is a narrative in and of itself, which is inconsistent with what we typically see in the cryptocurrency ecosystem (e.g. Ethereumâs transition to PoS, Solanaâs launch of Firedancer, Bitcoinâs transition to Lightning Network usage).
To be sure, the Ethereum blockchain itself delivers on a vision through core developers and EIPs, which is described in Vitalikâs updated roadmap, but it is just one of many narratives in the Ethereum narrative, including Optimistic Rollups, zk-Rollups, shared sequences, privacy Rollups, data availability, identity, NFTs, use case specific Rollups (e.g. gaming), and more.
This trend of community diffusion will accelerate not only on Ethereum, but on every general-purpose smart contract chain. After all, the cryptocurrency ecosystem is planning to attract 8 billion people. Because scale breaks down intimacy, it is reasonable to assume that over time there will not be just one Ethereum community, or one Solana community.
So, where do we go from here? What would it mean for the Ethereum community to successfully complete this transition? Here, I look for three indicators.
First, Ethereumâs most important social principles are maintained throughout the Rollup ecosystem. These principles are decentralization, trusted neutrality, and permissionless access and innovation. It doesnât matter to end users whether the Ethereum blockchain is trusted neutrality if they are subject to censorship or their assets are seized by the Rollup ecosystem.
Second, from a user perspective, they should enjoy the same level of security using Rollup as when transacting on the Ethereum mainnet. Tactically, this means that Rollups should inherit the security of Ethereum, and even if the Rollup sequence generator is untrustworthy, they should not have the opportunity to steal user funds.
Finally, I think the most important thing for Ethereum is that the Rollup ecosystem should use ETH as its primary currency. Beyond tactical considerations (Rollups need ETH to settle with Ethereum, users already own and like ETH, ETH already has excellent monetary properties, etc.), there is a deeper reason for cryptocurrency: to create the best form of money in the world.
The Ethereum community cannot lose sight of this goal. Now is the time to build a currency controlled by anyone but used by everyone. And we have a great chance of achieving this goal. This is not to say that every Rollup must execute these pillars perfectly. Some may require KYC thresholds, others may use their own tokens as gas, and so on. But these metrics give us a sense of direction - whether the Rollup ecosystem is driving the abstract concept of "Ethereum".
So what does this mean for the Ethereum community?
This means that over time you will hear less and less about the Ethereum blockchain itself and more about the sub-communities within it. The Ethereum blockchain will become the old, taken-for-granted, solid foundation that we will assume exists and is supported through the trials and tribulations of cryptocurrency growth over the next few decades.
This dynamic will mirror what happened with web2, where while the initial focus was on the internet, we are now focusing on online communities while taking the internet itself for granted. In many ways, the endgame for the Ethereum community is that everyone is part of the Ethereum community while no one primarily identifies as a member of the Ethereum community.
Of course, the concept of L1 fading into the background isnât new. Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko has been advocating for years to focus more on things built on top of blockchains, rather than on blockchains themselves.
As Solana continues to grow and gain adoption, Iâll be curious to see how the Solana community evolves over time. Since its monolithic design will likely result in a tighter community, it may have a different way of spreading out its community than what we see on Ethereum today. In the meantime, all eyes are on the Ethereum community as it makes this fascinating transition toward greater diversity.
