it's much easier to talk and reason about these systems if we focus on the end-properties we want

@jessepollak @Austin_Federa @base I think (i) getting to stage 1 and then stage 2, (ii) getting &lt;= 1h native withdrawal times, (iii) having bypass channels for censorship resistance, are all more important for L2s than decentralizing the sequencer.

I've been heartened to see how much progress there has been on

This is the point that L2 proponents and L2 detractors have been fighting over 

L2s give their users the properties of decentralization while still being centralized 

Decentralizing the sequencer != decentralization, and decentralization != good in the L2 context

David Hoffman

it's much easier to talk and reason about these systems if we focus on the end-properties we want

https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1927051635689136298

we don't want decentralization for its *own* sake, we use it to achieve a specific property: hardness.   

i.e.  credible guarantee that "this system will continue to behave predictably in the future" and will not be captured, resisting censorship & other manipulation.

the hard guarantees offered to users is the point, and sometimes "naive decentralization of every layer of the stack" is not the best way to get there

cryptography also us build hard constraints to prevent manipulation and enforce guarantees.

e.g. in a ZK rollup the req that a centralized sequencer submit a ZK proof of each state transition means that, even though it is "centralized", there are limits on bad behaviour

decentralization of various kinds ("anyone can run a node and there are thousands of them", "updates to the protocol are made by a large community in the open", etc) is a core part of how that is achieved on L1, but it is not the only tool we have.