Optimism expected to survive with OP Stack and Coinbase backing

Quo vadis, Ethereum? Ethereum is heading into a period of testing and gradual deployment (potentially over the coming years) of more significant changes. This year in particular, we’ll see Glamsterdam, followed later by ZK-EVM. In simple terms: Ethereum is meant to function as an extremely secure and decentralized base layer, while scaling is intended to be handled primarily through cryptography—specifically ZK proofs. Ethereum is already entering the practical phase of ZK-EVM experiments. In 2026, the first test deployments of ZK-EVM will become available—users and validators will be able to run ZK-EVM nodes and begin verifying their behavior in real-world conditions. This is still not a mass production deployment, but it’s no longer “just a future plan,” and broader adoption should arrive during 2027–2030. That future needs to be kept in mind and reflected in how we think about our next steps (which is why I’m writing this). At the same time, sometime around mid-year we’ll get Glamsterdam, which aggressively increases the gas limit and transforms blockspace allocation. Thanks to changes like BALs and ePBS, the gas limit will no longer be stuck at an arbitrary number—it will increase adaptively with demand. This will lead to a significant increase in throughput and long-term downward pressure on market gas fees. The gas limit could rise during the year from ~60M to 100–200M+, allowing L1 to process substantially more transactions without pushing traffic off-chain (rollups still matter, but the pressure on their pricing/value proposition changes). These changes will result in: - higher network throughput - lower transaction costs - more efficient L2 operation, since their computation and data can be verified more cheaply via ZK proofs (less of a bottleneck at L1) Increasing L1 capacity and the gradual integration of ZK-EVM is not an existential threat to L2s—but it is a major shift in the competitive landscape. L2s that exist primarily as a response to expensive and constrained Ethereum are, for the first time, entering a situation where their value is no longer automatic. Once L1 offers cheaper and more predictable blockspace, L2s will have to justify their existence by something other than just transaction price. That doesn’t mean L2s disappear—but it does mean the end of the era where “being an L2” was enough. So what should we realistically expect? L2s will need a specific function or a clear differentiator (a user base with higher throughput requirements, specialized transaction behavior, etc.). Most L2s will celebrate this and show how the bottleneck removal also increased their throughput—but the reality is that this will likely hurt them. Would you rather hold your assets/stakes/LPs on an L1 that now costs you cents, or on a faster, self-governed L2 that costs fractions of a cent but uses L1 only as security—adding another layer where something can go wrong? A secondary impact will be felt by bridging infrastructure, especially projects whose main volume comes from EVM-to-EVM transfers driven primarily by gas cost arbitrage. If the need to move assets between L2s and L1 purely for cost reasons decreases, part of that flow will naturally disappear. This doesn’t mean the end of bridges, but it does mean pressure on their revenue models and a need to find new use cases beyond simple liquidity routing. Maybe I’m missing something, but in my view Ethereum is a relatively safe bet if crypto as a whole survives and capital doesn’t flow exclusively into “digital gold” in the form of BTC. On the other hand, L2s (especially those with large upcoming unlocks) that lack any real differentiation will likely struggle. That doesn’t mean this is immediately a clean long–short trade—mainly because we could still get a temporary alt-season where L2s once again go into irrational territory. But it’s worth keeping this in mind and adjusting your confidence in the ecosystem and related projects accordingly. To oversimplify: It's bullish for: - Ethereum - potentially ZK projects on Solana built on a similar approach (e.g. @LightProtocol) Among L2s, the likely survivors are those with real differentiation: - Arbitrum (liquidity gravity + Robinhood) - Optimism (OP Stack + Coinbase integration) - Base (if it launches a token) - zkSync (uses ZK as a feature, not just scaling) L2s under the most pressure: - Linea - Scroll - Metis - Boba - Blast - … For these projects, it will be critical whether they can offer clear differentiation beyond “yet another EVM-compatible L2.” Without that, their position objectively worsens in a world with cheaper L1 blockspace. And partially the same applies to bridges whose volume is dominated by EVM–EVM routes. Endgame roadmap: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2021/12/06/endgame.html