This week, the Ethereum ecosystem was rocked by a $654 million ETH switch by the Ethereum Basis. This started intense scrutiny of developer pay, transparency, and management, resulting in the general public resignation of core developer Péter Szilágyi and new criticism of governance practices.
On the identical time, Polygon’s AggLayer upgrades are experiencing startup delays and community instability, intensifying debate over Layer 2 alignment, fragmentation, and Basis help for exterior L2.
These developments, together with the instability of the POL token transition, the continued wrestle to steadiness mainnet centralization and L2 sovereignty, and reactions to the Basis’s earlier management reorganization, add new urgency to the controversy over Ethereum’s future course and the sustainable development of its scaling ecosystem.
Ethereum household feud
A number of weeks after Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal took over as CEO of the Polygon Basis and warned of Ethereum’s “existential” Layer 2 (L2) course, Ethereum’s scaling structure took a flip from a technical sidebar to a political-economic one when Vitalik Buterin praised Coinbase’s Base for “doing issues the best manner.”
The query that emerges from the competing visions is whether or not Ethereum will standardize the best way L2 captures and settles worth, or whether or not we’ll see liquidity fragment into parallel methods that bypass the mainnet.
This stress crystallized by way of three developments in mid-2025. Nailwal took over management of Polygon Basis on June 11 amid a strategic reset, positioning the community as extra unbiased from Ethereum’s rollup-centric custom.
Polygon shipped AggLayer v0.3 on June twenty third, advancing chain-agnostic interoperability with PoS. PoS was anticipated to be related by the top of the third quarter, however that had not occurred on the time of this text.
Buterin’s public endorsement of Base in September reignited the controversy over whether or not Ethereum’s management helps a selected L2, amplifying earlier frictions as Nailwal questioned the shortage of visibility from Ethereum’s core builders and warned that anti-L2 sentiment may destroy the ecosystem’s social cloth.
In keeping with L2BEAT information, Arbitrum and Base account for the most important share of worth secured on Ethereum Layer 2, adopted by OP Mainnet and Linea.
Polygon zkEVM stays considerably smaller than proof-of-stake chains, each when it comes to complete worth locked and transaction exercise.
The Dune Sequencer Revenue Dashboard reveals that Base and Arbitrum generate nearly all of web sequencer revenue much less layer 1 information prices, with Base constantly rating as the highest revenue generator by way of the top of 2025.
Buterin’s 2025 roadmap commentary focuses on simplification, mainnet resiliency, together with improved privateness, and a Layer 2 person expertise that depends closely on Layer 1 safety ensures.
This steerage establishes alignment with what Ethereum management considers “good L2 citizenship”: proof of reliable fraud or legitimacy, reliance on Ethereum for information availability, and new requirements for gentle purchasers and shared sequences.
Polygon’s AggLayer pursues chain-agnostic shared liquidity, putting the community adjoining quite than inside Ethereum’s rollup custom.
Its Proof-of-Stake chain is shifting to a zkEVM validium integration that leverages an alternate information availability layer.
Three paths to charge acquisition and market construction
The subsequent 6-12 months will check whether or not Ethereum can standardize the move of worth throughout competing layer 2 architectures.
With a 50% to 60% probability of a delicate adjustment situation, Ethereum mainnet will seize 25% to 40% of complete layer 2 charge income as prices stabilize on account of blob compression and improved information availability.
Base and Arbitrum retain 60% to 70% of Layer 2’s web income, and the prevalence of the OP stack maintains Base’s distribution benefit by way of Coinbase’s on-ramp infrastructure.
Polygon’s AggLayer connects the Proof-of-Stake ecosystem with the CDK chain to drive elevated cross-chain liquidity. Nonetheless, Ethereum native transaction flows favor OP stack clusters with formal cost ensures.
The efficiency of POL tokens on this situation is determined by the breadth of the ecosystem quite than rolled up legitimacy credentials.
In a 20% to 25% likelihood fragmentation situation, Ethereum mainnet information availability returns will possible decline as actions shift to non-Ethereum DA layers, together with verification and different availability companies.
Layer 1 collects solely 15% to 25% of Layer 2’s complete charges, as competing liquidity facilities akin to AggLayer, OP Superchain, and application-specific ZK rollups divide customers between incompatible requirements.
Most extractable worth (MEV) smoothing throughout Layer 2 has lagged in technical adoption and worsens the person expertise throughout cross-rollup operations.
The Proof-of-Stake migration to AggLayer establishes a parallel liquidity hub partially decoupled from Ethereum’s social consensus mechanism, so Polygon beneficial properties mindshare with chain-agnostic routing on this situation.
The likelihood of reconvergence beneath Ethereum-first requirements is 20%-25%, pushed by sturdy layer 2 minimalism by way of the usage of light-weight purchasers, failure and plausibility proofs, shared sequences or proposer-builder separation, and likewise applies to rollups.
As infrastructure requirements develop into extra stringent, mainnets will gather 35% to 50% of the entire Layer 2 charges. Base and Arbitrum scale back the burden on customers to maneuver belongings between chains by way of OP Stack standardization and cross-rollup bridging, consolidating over 70% of layer 2 revenue shares.
Polygon will strengthen Ethereum integration by way of ZK Proof and Ethereum information availability lanes on its flagship chain, positioning AggLayer as a person expertise differentiator quite than a sovereign technique competing with mainnet funds.
Dynamics of worth seize and distribution
Ethereum traders face income era points which are straight associated to their selection of Layer 2 structure.
Ethereum’s elevated reliance on information availability (DA) and canonical proof methods will improve mainnet toll assortment, and traits in BLOB utilization in comparison with advances in layer 2 compression will decide whether or not Ethereum’s toll highway economics develop or decline.
The cross-rollup MEV market continues to be in its infancy, however as soon as Ethereum-aligned proposer-builder separation requirements lengthen to layer 2 sequencers, the extractable worth will return to Ethereum validators. An alternate situation the place MEVs are concentrated in layer 2 silos reduces the financial gravity of the mainnet.
Layer 2 tokens, together with ARB, OP, and POL, derive the story from web sequencer profitability, improve sensitivity to month-to-month income leaderboards that point out Base, and set person expertise requirements that stress tokenized rollups to function with out native tokens and justify their worth by way of income sharing, subsidies, or governance rights.
Polygon’s funding case improves if AggLayer drives composability that interprets into liquidity retention quite than ephemeral bridging quantity, no matter its rating as the most important pure rollup by conventional definition.
Monitoring AggLayer connection milestones and Proof-of-Stake migration progress gives a number one indicator for this situation.
Builders optimizing distribution are confronted with an actual calculation that their OP stack and base infrastructure will achieve short-term person acquisition by way of streamlined on-ramps and L2-to-L2 liquidity routing.
Groups that prioritize person expertise and cross-chain operability are prone to carry out higher than groups that target doctrinal alignment discussions, particularly as multi-chain person expertise stays a problem and community results favor the most important distribution hubs.
Centralization and interoperability as structural forces
Coinbase’s Base’s public acclaim from Buterin has sharpened the controversy over company affect and Ethereum’s social construction, particularly as international regulatory frameworks, together with MiCA and FATF steerage, favor a KYC-friendly L2 with a transparent operator.
Polygon’s chain-agnostic AggLayer imaginative and prescient competes with OP Superchains and ZK Rollup Hubs in an interoperability race just like the cell platform race. There, a walled backyard is contrasted with an open fluid mesh.
Ethereum’s mainnet is positioned as a elementary infrastructure quite than an unique cost layer.
Consumer gravity is targeted on networks that resolve multi-chain ache factors, with Vitalik and Ethereum core researchers driving a simplified Layer 1-secured L2 person expertise.
As person expertise requirements unify round a standard gentle consumer implementation and proof verification, community results will convey additional advantages to the most important distribution hubs, together with Base and Arbitrum.
The Polygon different will rely upon AggLayer establishing sufficient cross-chain liquidity to permit builders and customers to decide on composability over formal Ethereum funds.
The result will decide whether or not Ethereum operates as a standardized funds layer that derives predictable charges from coordinated rollups, or as one possibility in a competing structure the place liquidity and customers are distributed throughout networks with various levels of mainnet dependence.
Sequencer revenue focus, blob utilization, and AggLayer adoption metrics by mid-2026 will reveal which path the ecosystem will take and whether or not loyalty to Ethereum will develop into a measurable financial parameter quite than a social layer assumption.
