Written by: Blue Fox
What does this mean?
It is equivalent to more than 3x the L1 execution capacity, with expectations of further doubling in the future. Combined with technologies such as ePBS, BAL optimization, and gas repricing, L1 throughput will increase significantly. If demand does not surge suddenly, L1 fees could remain at very low levels for a long time, potentially making them imperceptible to users.
So, what does this mean for Ethereum L2s or other high-performance blockchains?
First, Ethereum L1 fees are approaching those of L2s, or even becoming comparable.
Current L1 regular transfer fees are already very low (around $0.1-$0.4). If the upgrade further pushes gas prices to the 0.01-0.05 gwei level, many simple transactions can be done directly on L1 without needing L2s. One reason is the added bridge/withdrawal costs, another is that L1 is simply more secure.
One of the core selling points of L2s in the past—“much cheaper than L1”—will be significantly weakened.
Second, the economic models of L2s face adjustments.
L2s themselves also need to post data to L1 (data availability). L1 becoming cheaper is beneficial for L2s (lower rollup costs). However, at the same time, L1 itself becomes “sufficient and cheap,” leading many applications to potentially choose direct L1 deployment (especially DeFi, NFTs, and gaming scenarios that don't require extremely high TPS).
This also forces L2s to upgrade. To maintain competitiveness, L2s must differentiate themselves in speed, customized execution environments, and specific application optimizations (e.g., zk proof speed, account abstraction, perp-specific chains), rather than relying solely on being “cheap.”
The evolutionary trend is that, aside from a few general-purpose L2s like Base and Arbitrum, more application-specific L2s, such as Lighter and Ronin, may appear in the future. This also encourages Polymarket to choose the Ethereum L2 path.
In the short term, Ethereum L1 appears to lose significant fee revenue. But in the long run, this greatly benefits Ethereum's ecosystem control, ultimately translating into more fee revenue.
Finally, the pressure on high-performance blockchains increases significantly.
High-performance chains previously used “ETH L1 is slow and expensive” as a target. Now, ETH L1 has suddenly become “fast and cheap + most secure + deepest liquidity + most comprehensive developer ecosystem,” severely compressing the differentiating advantages of high-performance blockchains.
Unless they can continue to significantly lead in actual TPS, finality, developer experience, and capital efficiency, many projects and users may reassess “whether it's worth leaving the Ethereum ecosystem.”
This could lead to a trend where, aside from one or two high-performance blockchains, others gradually become part of the Ethereum ecosystem, with more projects and users shifting towards Ethereum L1 and L2s.
This upgrade represents a return to Ethereum's “single-chain narrative”: L1 itself first ramps up capacity, with L2s continuing to layer on top.
For L2 projects: short-term positive (cost reduction), medium-term pressure (must prove they are more valuable than L1).
For other blockchains: the competitive bar has been raised even higher.
