polynya
@polynya
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In 2021, I wrote extensively on this topic. On paper, purely technically, it was a no-brainer - greater performance, interoperability, secure access to ethereum liquidity, security & decentralization, significantly lower inflation for economic sustainability, etc. etc.
Since then, all major new chains have been L2s - from DAOs (Unichain) to crypto corporations (Coinbase, Kraken) to tradfi (Robinhood), with the sole exception of Hyperliquid. There have been some L1 > L2 like Celo as mentioned. However, over 4 years, most legacy L1s have remained L1s.
Potential reasons:
- Application demand growth has been a fraction of expectations. Most L1s have barely any activity and have no need for the greater performance or interoperability of L2s
- L2 & blob dev have slowed down since '22 potentially due to the above, with performance much lower than expected in '25
- Much of their token value is based on being an anti-ethereum cult
- The industry has pivoted to degeneracy, decentralization/security matter less now 11 replies
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This is actually happening, potentially before ~2031 that I expected at the time (though still years away). ~Infinite chains, ~infinite composability, ~infinite scalability, all verified on your phone with a single infinitely recursive ZKP - this remains the only way to global scale
Of course, in 2025, this is not the bottleneck, this was going to happen anyway. The real focus must be on stimulating demand - Ethereum L2s are barely saturating 3 blobs for 15+ months, and for 3+ years the industry at large is severely oversupplying blockspace, and the gap is ever widening. Building an infinite ocean is useless if you have a swimming pool's water to fill it with. But hey, I've beaten that dead horse for 2-3 years, no one (or very few) cared.
https://polynya.medium.com/fanciful-endgame-5e760d427076 21 replies
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For my personal use, crypto is in a great place. Fees, speeds, wallet UX, applications are perfectly fine for my usecases, and they'll keep getting better. However, I'd like to see some things significantly improved, in order of importance:
- CRITICAL: Configurable withdrawal rate limiting in Safe & smart wallets and indeed, in all smart contracts, should be a standard. Without this, I significantly limit my usage of crypto
- Custodial standards for smart wallets
- Stage 2+ decentralisation for L2s, complete overhaul for Tron (normies receive USDT on Tron)
- EUR stables w/ liquidity
- Better frontends & standards
- More competition & options for minimal hardware wallets
- Range order management for Uniswap V4
- Significantly less volatile, reliable, long-term sustainable and high liquidity SoVs (BTC and ETH are far too erratic)
- Integration into widely adopted payment networks, both global and domestic
- Some inaccessible assets tokenised as RWAs
- Farcaster with bustling non-crypto content/discussions 44 replies
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Greed is the human instinct we have failed to keep in check.
It's not inevitable at all, most emerging industries have consortiums and strong intra-industry cooperation. In crypto, there's too much infighting with the focus on attracting greater fools, than improving our mechanism design and culture to be less negative-sum.
Worse still, most people actively encourage it, while the minority who see it as a problem just give up "it's just human nature, we can't do anything about it, I'll just focus on my lane". Categorically false. Literally, capitalism, which makes the modern world go round, is an exercise in harnessing greed to be positive-sum through good design & regulations.
Crypto is a rare and specific failure case, and it'll continue to be till the industry self-reflects and forms a will to improve.
There's also a lack of good regulations by most governments, but I'd argue this is largely downstream of the above. 1 reply
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I haven't commented about rollups in several months, if not over a year, so I'm just a casual observer now...
Native rollups are pretty cool, and what I meant by "enshrined zkEVM bridge" a couple of years ago (except they've got a wider scope than zkEVMs)
However, they are not "enshrined rollups", as I wrote about them at least, which are in-protocol, L1 rollups
Overarching thought on rollups: there simply has not been anywhere enough demand to saturate 1,000+ chains by 2025 like I had expected in 2021. Including all L1s and L2s, there's maybe like 10, at most. I'm sure demand will grow, but not to the magnitude anyone expected. It would be prudent to factor in this lower terminal demand in infrastructure designs, instead of just "build it they'll come" hopium.
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