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 battle to stability mainnet centralization and L2 sovereignty, and reactions to the Basis’s earlier management reorganization, add new urgency to the controversy over Ethereum’s future route and the sustainable progress of its scaling ecosystem.
Ethereum household feud
A couple of weeks after Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal took over as CEO of the Polygon Basis and warned of Ethereum’s “existential” Layer 2 (L2) route, 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 proper manner.”
The query that emerges from the competing visions is whether or not Ethereum will standardize the way in which L2 captures and settles worth, or whether or not we’ll see liquidity fragment into parallel techniques 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 tip 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 specific L2, amplifying earlier frictions as Nailwal questioned the shortage of visibility from Ethereum’s core builders and warned that anti-L2 sentiment might destroy the ecosystem’s social material.
Based on L2BEAT knowledge, Arbitrum and Base account for the biggest 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 whole 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 knowledge prices, with Base persistently rating as the highest revenue generator by way of the tip 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 legit fraud or legitimacy, reliance on Ethereum for knowledge availability, and new requirements for gentle purchasers and shared sequences.
Polygon’s AggLayer pursues chain-agnostic shared liquidity, putting the community adjoining slightly than inside Ethereum’s rollup custom.
Its Proof-of-Stake chain is transferring to a zkEVM validium integration that leverages another knowledge availability layer.
Three paths to payment acquisition and market construction
The subsequent 6-12 months will check whether or not Ethereum can standardize the stream of worth throughout competing layer 2 architectures.
With a 50% to 60% likelihood of a tender adjustment state of affairs, Ethereum mainnet will seize 25% to 40% of whole layer 2 payment income as prices stabilize as a consequence of blob compression and improved knowledge availability.
Base and Arbitrum retain 60% to 70% of Layer 2’s web earnings, 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 fee ensures.
The efficiency of POL tokens on this state of affairs relies on the breadth of the ecosystem slightly than rolled up legitimacy credentials.
In a 20% to 25% likelihood fragmentation state of affairs, Ethereum mainnet knowledge availability returns will doubtless decline as actions shift to non-Ethereum DA layers, together with verification and various availability providers.
Layer 1 collects solely 15% to 25% of Layer 2’s whole charges, as competing liquidity facilities reminiscent of 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 positive factors mindshare with chain-agnostic routing on this state of affairs.
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 in addition applies to rollups.
As infrastructure requirements turn out to be extra stringent, mainnets will gather 35% to 50% of the overall Layer 2 charges. Base and Arbitrum cut back the burden on customers to maneuver property 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 knowledge availability lanes on its flagship chain, positioning AggLayer as a person expertise differentiator slightly than a sovereign technique competing with mainnet funds.
Dynamics of worth seize and distribution
Ethereum traders face income technology points which might be instantly associated to their selection of Layer 2 structure.
Ethereum’s elevated reliance on knowledge availability (DA) and canonical proof techniques will improve mainnet toll assortment, and developments in BLOB utilization in comparison with advances in layer 2 compression will decide whether or not Ethereum’s toll street economics increase 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 state of affairs 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 strain 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 slightly than ephemeral bridging quantity, no matter its rating as the biggest pure rollup by conventional definition.
Monitoring AggLayer connection milestones and Proof-of-Stake migration progress supplies a number one indicator for this state of affairs.
Builders optimizing distribution are confronted with an actual calculation that their OP stack and base infrastructure will acquire 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 biggest 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 much 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 slightly than an unique fee layer.
Consumer gravity is concentrated 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 deliver additional advantages to the biggest distribution hubs, together with Base and Arbitrum.
The Polygon various will rely on 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 turn out to be a measurable financial parameter slightly than a social layer assumption.
