jakiro
Author: Bingfrog Source: X, @Ice_Frog666666
As it turns out, Layer2 was not falsified, but L2 of PUA users expected to be falsified by airdrops.
With the overall performance of the Ethereum ecosystem and the imbalance between Infra and Application, L2 has to face a cruel market knockout round, and the liquidity segmentation problem that the market is worried about will also disappear in the knockout round. Looking ahead, we will solve the interoperabilityOn the basis of this, once the Ethereum application end completes its breakthrough, L2 may return to its former glory.
1. L2 overview: From expansion and reduction of cost to PUA users
L2 as infrastructure: low threshold, blooming flowers; homogeneity, weak narrative
After Ethereum moved to the POS mechanism, Layer2 (L2) competition has become the most anticipated area in Ethereum and even the blockchain world.In essence, L2’s solution achieves the reduction of transaction costs and expansion of throughput by sacrificing a small part of security. On Ethereum’s main network roadmap, this is the key to moving towards the ultimate sharding (solidation)ring.
After Optimism opened the OP Stack, one-click link distribution has become a reality. The technical threshold of L2 has been reduced to the lowest level, and there are endless projects of various types. Incomplete statistics, only L2, which is still active on the market, has surpassed it.More than 60 items, this shows that Ethereum is still attractive, but on the other hand, it makes people wonder whether so many L2s are really necessary, especially the high degree of homogeneity of each L2.The liquidity fragmentation problem is becoming increasingly serious, which leads to the fact that after Ethereum Cancun upgraded and introduced EIP-4844 in 2024, although the transaction fees of L2 have been greatly reduced, the Ethereum and even the L2 ecosystem have not had the expected prosperity and explosion, and are homogeneous.There is a constant voice in the market criticism and dissatisfaction.
L2’s development model: Eco-winning or PUA user
While L2 was still experiencing great expectations in the market, the four major king projects (Arbitrum, Optimism, ZkSync, StarkWare) have always been the focus of the community and the entire market. They have huge financing, super high valuation, and a wide range of ecology.With technical strength, it has become the leader of the L2 track. However, today, when the L2 track is full of mud and sand, some have changed from kings to “death of heaven”, and some have basically maintained their position as the leader and are constantly facing their competitors.Breaking the gap.The difference between this needs to start with the development model of L2.
The business model of L2 is relatively simple, which is the model of the secondary landlord, making profits through the Gas spread between L2 and L1.Under this business model, L2 is facing a group of developers and users, which requires developers to continue to build, and users to continue to trade.Under this simple logic, the operational capabilities of the project itself are tested.This has also formed the development differentiation between projects. Some have continuously lowered the threshold for developers and expanded the ecological alliance; some have focused on cultivating native applications and strengthened core advantages, while others have continuously attracted users to participate in the interaction through airdrop expectations and pulledHigh TVL.
Under the same profit model, different development paths and focus have also led to different results today. At least market data prove that projects that are serious and focused on ecology have higher activity and stronger risk resistance, while expectations are constantly being carried out through airdropsPUA users’ projects have become outdated and no one cares about them.
2. Market data: From the king of heaven to the demise of heaven, there is only one airdrop
Market data: Some daily active users are as low as single digits, while others are steady and steady
In the blockchain world, issuing coins to some extent means that the harvest period has arrived, but whether it can still attract users after the harvest period is an important indicator to test the quality of a project.
If you look at the timeline of issuing coins:
The main projects that have issued coins in old brands are: Arbitrum and Optimism;
Recently, the coins issued are: Zksync, Starknet, and Blast;
It is expected that the coin will be issued in the near future: Linea and Scroll.
The data are expressed one by one as follows:
Arbitrum
As the leader in L2, Arbitrum has a huge TVL of 13 billion. Judging from the data, the average daily data is basically stable, and the ETH bridge can reach an average daily average of 1,000E, with high activity, large transaction volume and high protocol revenue.
Even if other L2s use all kinds of means to divert TVL, Arbitrum’s activity remains unabated, truly reflecting its leading value.
Arbitrum’s average daily bridge fund, data source.
Optimism
As a veteran L2, Optimism has a gap in data compared to Arbitrum, but from the perspective of data stability, its activity and stability are still better.
Chart: Optimism’s average daily bridge capital
Data link:
https://dune.com/queries/3626332/6108345
https://dune.com/queries/784244/1399124
ZKsync
As the leader of zero-knowledge proof, he leaped from the “Heaven King” level public chain to the “Heaven Death” level, with only one airdrop left.Although both V-God and the industry believe that ZK technology is forward-looking, its market performance and controversial airdrops have made its market performance unsatisfactory.
Currently, ZKsync’s overall activity is extremely low, especially after the project TGE was released on June 7, its on-chain activity has experienced a cliff-like decline.There are often less than 1E deposits per day and less than 10 deposits. The daily income of the agreement can barely remain around 1E, basically the loss of money maintains the agreement operation.
Zksync agreement revenue and daily activity after airdrop
Data link:
https://dune.com/gm365/era
https://dune.com/peyha/sequencer-profit-on-l2s
https://dune.com/queries/3813897/6414359
After further reviewing the recent data, the activity level is almost 0, the number of depositors is single-digit, and only a few dozen US dollars is deposited. For a project with an FDV of 2 billion and financing of over 100 million, the data is so bleak that it cannot be seen directly.
Starknet
Starknet also uses zero-knowledge proof technology, but its data is slightly better than ZKsync, with an average daily bridge deposit of about hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the overall active users are still relatively small, and the number of daily transactions has fallen from this year to a single day.With an average of 70,000 transactions, the average daily trading volume of DEX is less than US$5 million. For a public chain with an FDV of 4 billion, the activity performance is still very poor.
Starknet daily bridge funds & Daily depositors & Dex transaction volume
Data link:
https://dune.com/queries/831568/1453718
https://dune.com/tk-research/starknet
Blast
Blast’s daily active users are very low, and TVL has dropped sharply to $1.5 billion from its peak at the beginning of this year, a drop of 60%.The outflow of project funds is very serious.From the data, it is obvious that this year, the daily active users exceeded 3,000 on the day of airdrops. It has been three months since the application for airdrops, and the average daily active users are less than 100.
Chart: Blast TVL Data & Daily Active Data
Data link:
https://dune.com/alec/blast-the-new-eth-l2
https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/blastbridge?v=NDhjMTQ3YzUwYzg4ZGU5MjI5MzNmYWVh
Linea
Linea performed well in the early stages, but due to the lack of clear coin issuance plans and airdrop expectations, user activity has dropped significantly recently. The daily bridge funds are sometimes less than 1E, but the number of users is large, with an average daily bridge number reaching about 150.Comparison of the data of the two shows that hair-pushing users have contributed many small txes.Overall, due to the lack of obvious expectations for Linea’s issuance of coins, the DAU has declined. Currently, there are only more than 1,000 new users per day, far less than the previous daily increase of 100,000 new users.
Chart: Linea Daily Active Data & New users every day
Data link:
https://dune.com/linea/linea-overview
https://dune.com/queries/2733739/4549682
Scroll
Scroll’s DAU has been declining since the beginning of this year, with about 100 new users in a single day, but because Scroll’s expectations for issuing coins are strong and historical retention is high, the interaction of old wallets has been underway.From the perspective of revenue, the Scroll protocol revenue is fair, but compared with the other L2s that issued coins recently, the data is relatively good.
Scroll Daily Active Data & Agreement Average Daily Revenue
Data link:
https://dune.com/queries/3626340/6108370
Reasons behind the data: L2 competition bayonet is getting better, airdrop expectation is a double-edged sword
From the above data, it can be clearly seen that due to the large number of L2s, competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Judging from the current situation, the old Arbitrum and Optimism are always strong, while the newly issued coins Zksync, starknet and Blast are falling behind.As the road goes further and further, Linea and Scroll, which are about to issue coins, are barely surviving their lives by airdrop expectations.The reason for this is worthy of analysis, and one particularly worth mentioning is airdrop expectations management.
The myth of wealth-making brought by airdrops has made users’ expectations for airdrops higher and higher, which has also become an important means for the project party to grasp users. However, through the above comparison, it can be clearly seen that the project party can indeed continuously improve TVL through airdrops, and thenImprove valuation and obtain large amounts of financing, but assuming that time and money cannot be invested continuously in user experience, ecological construction, airdrop expectation management, etc., it will continue to increase user expectations, resulting in “high thunder and little rainfall” orThe results cannot be relatively fair, so the market backlash will still come very quickly.
Zksync is a typical example. The hair-beating party has supported a market value of 10 billion yuan. However, the four-year airdrop waiting for ushering in the community’s scolding of “rat-handling”. The sharp decline in reputation has led to a sharp decline in market data. As of now, it is difficult to restore the glory of the past.
In contrast, although Arbitrum and Optimism have not reached a new level in currency prices, they have continued to make efforts in ecological construction and have tried their best to achieve “even rain and dew” and relatively fairness in airdrops, at least maintaining stability in data, ensuring the continuous project.Stable operation.Perhaps Zksync’s past lessons have allowed Scroll and Linea, which have not yet issued coins, to give clear signals on airdrops and coins, to exchange time for space, so as to win the opportunity to breathe and wait for the next right opportunity.
3. L2’s breakthrough: integration or elimination, Dawn is on the application side
Since the beginning of this year, the voices of criticizing Ethereum have continued. The main reason is that the Ethereum ecosystem not only faces the failure of L2 growth expectations, but also has continuous impacts such as Solana, which is superimposed on the poor market conditions, and the expected prosperity and coin price are large.The rise has not come.From the L2 perspective, its core income comes from the price spread of Gas fees. However, when the main network Gas is as low as single digits, even the main network has no more sexy narrative, and it is foreseeable that the agreement revenue has dropped sharply.
If we only look at Ethereum’s technology and performance, L2 is undoubtedly successful and valuable. At least it solves Ethereum’s congestion and Gas problems in stages, but as mentioned at the beginning of this article, performance solutions also bring about the sameIn order to divert liquidity, the involuntary competition between rollups has exacerbated the split, and the first thing that interoperability issues are the first problem that L2 needs to cross.Founder Vitalik is obviously aware of this problem, and in August this year declared on social media that the problem will be resolved soon.In this process, we will inevitably face integration or elimination between L2s. After all, in terms of current activity, there is no need for more than 60 L2s.
If we look at it from a long-term perspective, the most important thing in L2’s business model is Gas fees, which highly depends on C-end users. What goes against the expectations is that most L2s who are burdened with high financing and high expectations choose to continue to build on the B-end infrastructureNew narratives such as RAAS, DAAS, AVS as a service are constantly emerging, which is equivalent to the construction of roads on main roads or tools for road construction, but at the entrance of the road, there are overgrown weeds.People are interested in it.Infra is popular and there are very few Applications. After all, the former is faster and can get large financing, while the latter is slower and not sexy, which leads to the imbalance in the development of Ethereum today.
In July this year, the biggest highlight of Vitalik’s speech on the theme “The Next Decade of Ethereum” at the Ethereum Developer Conference was to clarify that the biggest theme of the Ethereum ecosystem in the next decade is applications.If some L2 are further integrated or eliminated through interoperability, and the next round of killer applications are launched, the L2 track can still be reborn, but it is unknown which L2 mentioned in this article can stay.
4. Summary
By comprehensively sorting out the basic pattern, development model, market performance data and future breakthroughs of the Layer2 track, we can see:
Some projects rely on airdrop expectations for PUA users. Once the coin is issued, they will be instantly returned to their original form, and basically no one cares about it, such as ZkSync and Blast;
Some rely on the original accumulated ecological niche and user base, continue to occupy the forefront of the market through technological innovation and good operations, and are expected to win competitions in cruel competition, such as Arbitrum and Optimism;
Some have luxurious backgrounds and unprecedented financing, so they can only rely on airdrops to issue coins and struggle to support them, such as Linea and Scroll.
The data facts prove that L2 has not been falsified, but L2, which is expected to be falsified by airdrops, was falsified.
Further analysis shows that with the overall performance of the Ethereum ecosystem and the imbalance between Infra and Application, L2 has to face a cruel market knockout round, and the liquidity segmentation problem that the market is worried about will also disappear in the knockout round, and the prospects are expected.On the basis of solving interoperability, once the Ethereum application end completes its breakthrough, L2 may return to its former glory.
