This week, the Ethereum ecosystem has been rocked by a $654 million ETH switch by the Ethereum Basis. This triggered intense scrutiny over developer compensation, transparency, and management, culminating within the public resignation of core developer Péter Szilágyi and renewed criticism of governance practices.
Concurrently, Polygon’s AggLayer improve has confronted launch delays and community instability, intensifying debate about Layer-2 alignment, fragmentation, and the Basis’s assist for exterior L2s.
These developments, alongside POL token migration volatility, ongoing struggles to steadiness mainnet centralization with L2 sovereignty, and response to the Basis’s earlier government restructuring, have added contemporary urgency to the disputes over Ethereum’s future path and the sustainable progress of its scaling ecosystem.
Ethereum household feud
Ethereum’s scaling structure underwent a change from a technical sidebar to a political economic system when Vitalik Buterin praised Coinbase’s Base for “doing issues the best method,” weeks after Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal assumed the CEO position on the Polygon Basis, issuing warnings about Ethereum’s “existential” layer-2 (L2) path.
The query rising from competing visions is whether or not Ethereum will standardize how L2s earn and settle worth, or watch liquidity fragment into parallel methods that route round reasonably than via the mainnet.
The strain crystallized throughout three developments in mid-2025. Nailwal took management of Polygon Basis on June 11 amid a method reset, positioning the community as extra impartial from Ethereum’s rollup-centric orthodoxy.
Polygon shipped AggLayer v0.3 on June 23, advancing chain-agnostic interoperability with Polygon PoS, which was slated to attach by the tip of the third quarter, however didn’t occur as of press time.
Buterin’s public endorsement of Base in September reignited debates over whether or not Ethereum’s management favors particular L2s, amplifying earlier friction when Nailwal questioned the low recognition from Ethereum core builders and warned that anti-L2 sentiment may fracture the ecosystem’s social cloth.
Knowledge from L2BEAT reveals Arbitrum and Base command the most important shares of worth secured on Ethereum layer-2s, with OP Mainnet and Linea trailing.
The Polygon zkEVM stays materially smaller than its Proof-of-Stake chain, each when it comes to whole worth locked and transaction exercise.
Dune sequencer revenue dashboards reveal that Base and Arbitrum generate nearly all of web sequencer earnings after subtracting layer-1 knowledge prices, with Base constantly rating as a high revenue generator via late summer time 2025.
Buterin’s 2025 roadmap commentary facilities on simplification, mainnet resilience, together with privateness enhancements, and a layer-2 consumer expertise that depends extra closely on layer-1 safety ensures.
That steering establishes what Ethereum management considers “good L2 citizenship”: canonical fraud or validity proofs, reliance on Ethereum for knowledge availability, and alignment with rising requirements for gentle shoppers and shared sequencing.
Polygon’s AggLayer pursues chain-agnostic shared liquidity, positioning the community adjoining to, reasonably than inside, Ethereum’s rollup orthodoxy.
Its Proof-of-Stake chain is migrating towards zkEVM validium integration, which makes use of various knowledge availability layers.
Three paths for charge seize and market construction
The following six to 12 months will take a look at whether or not Ethereum can standardize worth flows throughout competing layer-2 architectures.
In a soft-alignment situation with a 50% to 60% chance, the Ethereum mainnet captures 25% to 40% of the layer-2 gross charge income as enhancements in blob compression and knowledge availability stabilize prices.
Base and Arbitrum retain 60% to 70% of layer-2 web income, with OP Stack proliferation sustaining Base’s distribution benefit via Coinbase’s on-ramp infrastructure.
Polygon’s AggLayer connects its Proof-of-Stake ecosystem and CDK chains to drive cross-chain liquidity progress. Nonetheless, Ethereum-native transaction flows prioritize OP Stack clusters resulting from canonical settlement ensures.
POL token efficiency on this situation will depend on the ecosystem’s breadth reasonably than rollup orthodoxy credentials.
A fragmentation situation at 20% to 25% chance sees Ethereum mainnet data-availability income underperform as exercise shifts to non-Ethereum DA layers, together with validiums and various availability companies.
Layer-1 captures solely 15% to 25% of layer-2 gross charges, as competing liquidity facilities, similar to AggLayer, OP Superchain, and application-specific ZK rollups, break up customers throughout incompatible requirements.
Maximal extractable worth (MEV) smoothing throughout layer-2s lags technical deployment, worsening consumer expertise throughout cross-rollup operations.
Polygon beneficial properties mindshare with chain-agnostic routing on this situation, as Proof-of-Stake migration to AggLayer establishes a parallel liquidity hub that’s partially decoupled from Ethereum’s social consensus mechanisms.
Re-convergence underneath Ethereum-first norms carries a 20% to 25% chance, pushed by stronger layer-2 minimalism via the usage of gentle shoppers, fault and validity proofs, and shared sequencing or proposer-builder separation, which additionally extends to rollups.
Mainnet captures 35% to 50% of layer-2 gross charges as infrastructure requirements tighten. Base and Arbitrum consolidate over 70% of layer-2 revenue share, with OP Stack standardization and cross-rollup bridging decreasing friction for customers shifting property between chains.
Polygon tightens Ethereum alignment via ZK proofs and Ethereum data-availability lanes for flagship chains whereas positioning AggLayer as a user-experience differentiator reasonably than a sovereignty play that competes with mainnet settlement.
Worth seize and distribution dynamics
Ethereum buyers face a revenue-capture query tied on to layer-2 structure decisions.
A better reliance on Ethereum’s knowledge availability (DA) and canonical proof methods will increase mainnet charge seize, with blob utilization tendencies relative to layer-2 compression advances figuring out whether or not Ethereum’s toll-road economics develop or erode.
Cross-rollup MEV markets stay nascent, but when Ethereum-aligned proposer-builder separation norms lengthen to layer-2 sequencers, extractable worth flows again to Ethereum validators. Various eventualities the place MEV concentrates in layer-2 silos cut back the mainnet’s financial gravity.
Layer-2 tokens, together with ARB, OP, and POL, derive their narratives from the profitability of the online sequencer, creating sensitivity to month-to-month revenue leaderboards that present Base, working with no native token, setting user-experience requirements that strain tokenized rollups to justify their worth via income sharing, grants, or governance energy.
Polygon’s funding case improves if AggLayer drives composability that converts to retained liquidity reasonably than transient bridge quantity, impartial of rating as the most important pure rollup by orthodox definitions.
Monitoring AggLayer connection milestones and Proof-of-Stake migration progress gives main indicators for this situation.
Builders optimizing for distribution confront a practical calculation the place OP Stack and Base infrastructure win near-term consumer acquisition via streamlined on-ramps and L2 to L2 liquidity routing.
Groups prioritizing consumer expertise and cross-chain operability might outperform these targeted on doctrinal alignment debates, notably as multichain consumer experiences stay difficult and community results favor the most important distribution hubs.
Centralization and interoperability as structural forces
Coinbase’s Base receiving public reward from Buterin sharpens debates over company affect versus Ethereum’s social cloth, notably as international regulatory frameworks, together with MiCA and FATF steering, favor KYC-friendly L2s with clear operational entities.
Polygon’s chain-agnostic AggLayer imaginative and prescient competes with OP Superchain and ZK rollup hubs in an interoperability arms race analogous to cell platform competitors, the place walled gardens are contrasted with open liquidity meshes.
The Ethereum mainnet is positioned as foundational infrastructure reasonably than an unique settlement layer.
Person gravity concentrates in networks that remedy multichain ache factors, with Vitalik and Ethereum core researchers pushing for a simplified, layer-1-secured L2 consumer expertise.
If user-experience requirements unify round frequent light-client implementations and proof verification, community results compound benefits for the most important distribution hubs, together with Base and Arbitrum.
Polygon’s various path will depend on AggLayer establishing adequate cross-chain liquidity, enabling builders and customers to go for composability over canonical Ethereum settlement.
The end result determines whether or not Ethereum operates as a standardized settlement layer capturing predictable charges from aligned rollups, or as one choice amongst competing architectures the place liquidity and customers distribute throughout networks with various levels of mainnet dependency.
Sequencer revenue focus, blob utilization charges, and AggLayer adoption metrics via mid-2026 will make clear which path the ecosystem follows, and whether or not loyalty to Ethereum turns into a measurable financial parameter reasonably than a social-layer assumption.
