$ETH ultrasound narrative is dead!

Or is it?

As EF scales the L1 and $ETH pumps, the ultrasound narrative is coming back. What a surprise :)

I'm not the first to write about it, but the market is yet to internalize the message.

The logic goes like this:

Gas limit (now ~36M) could hit 150M, boosting L1 scalability. Critics would say "oh that's bad, because lower fees burn less $ETH. Buy my alt-L1!"

That's the old thinking.

True that more txs per block = lower fees, but more activity could mean more ETH burned.

Higher gas limit → more txs outweigh lower fees → potentially more burn.

As @hanni_abu calculates, "at 36M and the deflationary threshold it 14.5 gwei.

At a 300M gas limit the deflationary threshold becomes 1.74 gwei (14.5gwei*36M/300M)."

He also adds that as gas prices drop, users are more willing to pay higher fees during congestion:

E.g., at $0.01, a 100% premium to $0.02 feels more acceptable than jumping from $5 to $10.

Lower prices make people less sensitive to congestion fees.

Sounds freaking amazing but here's a big question: Will users flock back to the L1?

Active addresses haven't grown on Ethereum for years.

Bad UX (approve+swap), slow and expensive txs are the main reasons but issues are being addressed (Pectra!)

So for ultrasound narrative to come back we need to see users and activity coming back to the L1.

It's a big pivot from pushing users out of the L1 to L2s.

Tbh, I do want users to come back, but it does put pressure on non-specialized L2s.

In any case, the following months and years are crucial for ETH: will users come back to the L1 and devs build new use cases on mainnet?

And if yes, will increase activity burn more ETH despite lower fees?

For the sake of my bags, I hope so!

As always, let me know what I might be missing here.