Written by: Lemniscap
Compilation: Saoirse, Foresight News
A more streamlined L1 and its performance-oriented and aligned Rollup solutions
Ethereum is committed to maintaining trusted neutrality while fostering innovation at higher levels. Early discussions outlined a 'Rollup-centric roadmap', where the underlying network will gradually simplify and solidify, allowing most activities to migrate to L2. However, recent developments indicate that merely serving as a minimal consensus and data availability layer is insufficient: L1 must have the capacity to handle traffic and activities, as this is the foundation on which L2 ultimately depends. This means a need for faster block generation speeds, lower data costs, more robust proof mechanisms, and better interoperability.
The increase in L1 activity will drive growth in L2 activity, truly raising all boats.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/EvYRiFRYQ9Q?si=bsLWGA6FP9pi2vqI&t=477
The upcoming Beam Chain consensus mechanism reconstruction aims to achieve faster final confirmation speeds and lower validator thresholds while enhancing original throughput and further reinforcing Ethereum's neutrality. Meanwhile, existing proposals consider migrating activities from the increasingly outdated (and 'growing complex') Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) to a RISC-V native virtual machine, which is expected to significantly improve prover efficiency while maintaining interoperability with traditional contracts.
These upgrades will reshape the landscape of L2. By 2030, I expect Ethereum's roadmap centered on universal Rollups to integrate in two directions within a certain range:
Aligned Rollups: Prioritize achieving deep integration with Ethereum (such as shared ordering and native verification) while fully utilizing L1's liquidity under minimal trust assumptions. This relationship is mutually beneficial, as aligned Rollups can directly access composability and security from L1.
Performance Rollups: Prioritize throughput and real-time user experience, sometimes achieving this through alternative data availability layers (DA layers) or authorized participants (like centralized orderers, small security committees/multi-signatures), but still regard Ethereum as the final settlement layer for credibility (or for marketing purposes).
In designing these Rollup solutions, each team must balance the following three aspects:
Liquidity acquisition: How to obtain and use liquidity on Ethereum and potentially other Rollup solutions? How important is synchronous or atomic-level composability?
Source of security: To what extent should liquidity moved from Ethereum to Rollups directly inherit Ethereum's security or depend on Rollup providers?
Execution expressiveness: How important is the compatibility of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)? Given alternatives like SVM and the rise of popular Rust smart contracts, will EVM compatibility still be important in the next five years?
The polarization along the Rollup spectrum
Rollup projects are gradually clustering towards two extremes. On one end are high-performance Rollups that can provide maximum throughput and user experience (high bandwidth, low latency) but have lower coupling with Ethereum's L1; on the other end are Ethereum-aligned Rollups (such as L1-based Rollups, native Rollups, and hyper Rollups, reference links), which leverage Ethereum's security, data, and consensus mechanisms, prioritizing decentralization, security, and trusted neutrality but sacrificing some performance due to L1 design constraints. Rollups trying to balance between the two may struggle to compete, ultimately gravitating towards one of the extremes and facing the risk of obsolescence.
The Rollup in the upper left corner of the chart focuses on performance: they may adopt centralized orderers, alternative data availability networks (DA networks), or application-specific optimizations to achieve throughput far exceeding conventional L2s (like MegaETH). Some performance-oriented Rollups may lean more towards the right in terms of alignment (for example, by adopting technologies based on fast pre-confirmation, such as Puffer UniFi and Rise, aiming for the 'ideal target' in the upper right corner), but their ultimate determinism still relies on L1's specifications. In contrast, the Rollup in the lower right corner maximizes alignment with Ethereum: integrating ETH deeply into fees, transactions, and DeFi; cementing transaction ordering and/or proof verification within L1; and prioritizing composability over raw speed (for example, while Taiko develops in this direction, it is also exploring permissioned pre-confirmation to optimize user experience). By 2030, I expect many 'moderate' L2s to either shift towards one of the aforementioned models or face the risk of obsolescence. Users and developers will tend to choose high-security environments aligned with Ethereum (for high-risk and composable DeFi scenarios) or highly scalable networks customized for applications (for mass-user applications). Ethereum's 2030 roadmap lays the foundation for both paths.
The definition of 'alignment' is controversial and has yet to reach a consensus. For the purposes of this report, the above is a brief analytical framework for 'performance' and 'alignment'. The previous charts are drawn based on this definition and may not apply to other interpretations of 'alignment'.
Why will the middle ground disappear?
The network effect will drive the market to concentrate towards fewer, larger hubs. In markets like cryptocurrencies, where network effects play a dominant role, a pattern dominated by a few winners may ultimately emerge (similar to what we see in the CEX space). As network effects coalesce around the core advantages of a chain, ecosystems tend to consolidate towards a few 'performance-maximizing' and 'security-maximizing' platforms. A Rollup that only achieves mediocre alignment with Ethereum's security or performance may ultimately fail to gain the benefits of either.
As Rollup technology matures, economic activities will stratify based on the trade-off between 'needed security' and 'cost of obtaining security'. Scenarios that cannot bear settlement or governance risks, such as institutional-level DeFi, large on-chain treasuries, and high-value collateral markets, may concentrate on chains inheriting Ethereum's full security guarantees and neutrality (or Ethereum L1 itself). On the other end, applications targeting the general public (like memes, trading, social, gaming, retail payments, etc.) will cluster on chains that offer the best user experience at the lowest cost; these chains may require customized throughput enhancement solutions or centralized ordering mechanisms. Therefore, those 'adequate speed but not the fastest, decent security but not optimal' general chains will gradually lose appeal. Especially by 2030, if cross-chain interoperability allows assets to flow freely between these two types of scenarios, the survival space for this middle ground will be even more limited.
The evolution of Ethereum's tech stack
The entire foundational layer of Ethereum (from execution, settlement, consensus to data availability) is planned for significant upgrades aimed at enhancing L1's scalability and better accommodating the rollup-centric development model. Key improvements (as indicated by arrows) will enhance performance, reduce complexity, and enable Ethereum to play a more direct role in Rollup operations.
Execution Layer
By 2030, Ethereum's current execution environment (using a 256-bit architecture and traditional design of the Ethereum Virtual Machine, EVM) may be replaced or enhanced by a more modern and efficient virtual machine. Vitalik has proposed upgrading the Ethereum virtual machine to a RISC-V based architecture. RISC-V is a streamlined, modular instruction set expected to achieve significant breakthroughs in transaction execution and proof generation efficiency (improving by 50-100 times). Its 32/64-bit instructions can directly adapt to modern CPUs and are more efficient in zero-knowledge proofs. To mitigate the impact of technical iterations and avoid stagnation (for instance, the previous community's consideration of replacing EVM with eWasm), a dual virtual machine model is planned: retaining EVM to ensure backward compatibility while introducing a new RISC-V virtual machine for handling new contracts (similar to Arbitrum Stylus's compatibility scheme for WASM + EVM contracts). This aims to greatly simplify and accelerate the execution layer while supporting L1's scalability and Rollup capabilities.
Why do this?
The design of the EVM did not consider zero-knowledge proofs, so zk-EVM provers incur significant overhead when simulating state transitions, computing root hashes/hash trees, and handling EVM-specific mechanisms. In contrast, the RISC-V virtual machine uses a simpler register logic, allowing direct modeling and proof generation with significantly reduced constraints. Its friendliness towards zero-knowledge proofs can eliminate inefficiencies in gas computation and state management, benefiting all Rollups using zero-knowledge proofs: generating state transition proofs will be simpler, faster, and cheaper. Ultimately, upgrading the EVM to a RISC-V virtual machine could enhance overall proof throughput, enabling direct verification of L2 execution by L1 (as detailed later), while also raising the throughput ceiling of performance-oriented Rollups' own virtual machines.
Additionally, this will break through the niche of Solidity/Vyper, significantly expanding Ethereum's developer ecosystem and attracting participation from more mainstream development communities like Rust, C/C++, and Go.
Settlement Layer
Ethereum plans to shift from scattered L2 settlement models to a unified, natively integrated settlement framework, which will fundamentally change how Rollup settlements work. Currently, each Rollup needs to deploy independent L1 verification contracts (fraud proofs or validity proofs), which are highly customized and independent of each other. By 2030, Ethereum may integrate a native function (the proposed EXECUTE pre-compile function) as a universal L2 execution validator. EXECUTE allows Ethereum validators to directly re-execute Rollup's state transitions and verify their correctness, essentially 'cementing' the ability to validate any Rollup block at the protocol layer.
This upgrade will spawn 'native Rollups', essentially programmable execution sharding (similar to NEAR's design). Unlike ordinary L2, standard Rollups, or L1-based Rollups, the blocks of native Rollups are validated by Ethereum's own execution engine.
Source: https://x.com/Spire_Labs/status/1915430799618564394
EXECUTE eliminates the complex customized infrastructure required for EVM simulation and maintenance (such as fraud proof mechanisms, zero-knowledge proof circuits, multi-sign 'security committees'), greatly simplifying the development of equivalent EVM Rollups, eventually achieving a fully trustless L2 with almost no custom code required. Combined with next-generation real-time provers (like Fermah, Succinct), real-time settlements can be achieved on L1: once Rollup transactions are included in L1, finality is achieved without waiting for fraud proof windows or multi-period proof computations. By constructing the settlement layer as a globally shared infrastructure, Ethereum enhances trusted neutrality (users can freely choose verification clients) and composability (without worrying about real-time proof issues within the same slot, synchronous composability is greatly simplified). All native (or native + L1-based) Rollups will use the same L1 settlement function to achieve standardized proofs and easy interaction between Rollups (sharding).
Consensus Layer
The Ethereum Beacon Chain's consensus layer is being restructured into the Beam Chain (planned for testing in 2027-2029), aiming to upgrade the consensus mechanism through advanced cryptographic techniques (including quantum resistance) to enhance scalability and decentralization. Among the six major research direction upgrades, core features relevant to this article include:
(The latest developments regarding the Beam Chain can be followed through the 'Beam Call' series on YouTube.)
Shorter slots, faster finality: One of the core goals of the Beam Chain is to enhance finality speed. Reducing the current finality time of about 15 minutes (under the Gasper mechanism, which consists of 2 epochs, i.e., 32+32 12-second slots) down to 3-slot finality (3SF, 4-second slots, about 12 seconds), ultimately achieving single-slot finality (SSF, about 4 seconds). 3SF + 4 seconds means that final confirmation can be completed within 10 seconds after a transaction is on-chain, greatly improving the user experience for L1-based Rollups and native Rollups: the speed of L1 block will directly accelerate the generation of Rollup blocks. The time to include a transaction in a block is about 4 seconds (longer under high load), resulting in a threefold increase in the block speed of the related Rollup (although still slower than performance-oriented Rollups, alternative L1s, or credit card payments, thus pre-confirmation mechanisms remain very important). Faster L1 finality will also ensure and accelerate settlements: Rollups can achieve rapid withdrawals by completing final confirmation of state submissions on L1 within seconds, reducing the risks of reorganization or forks. In short, the irreversibility of Rollup transaction batches will be shortened from 15 minutes to seconds.
Reducing consensus costs through SNARKification: Beam plans to 'SNARKify' the state transition function, allowing each L1 block to be accompanied by concise zk SNARK proofs. This is a prerequisite for achieving synchronous, programmable execution sharding. Validators can verify blocks and aggregate BLS signatures (and future quantum-resistant signatures) without processing each transaction, significantly lowering the computational costs of consensus (while also reducing hardware requirements for validators).
Lowering staking thresholds to enhance decentralization: Beam plans to reduce the minimum staking amount for validators from 32 ETH to 1 ETH. Combined with proposer-validator separation (APS, transferring MEV to on-chain auctions) and SNARKification, distributed anti-collusion block construction can be achieved, no longer favoring large staking pools (like Lido, which occupies 25% of market share), but instead supporting more independent stakers using devices like Raspberry Pi. This will enhance decentralization and trusted neutrality, directly benefiting aligned Rollups. Under the APS mechanism, the number of proposers will decrease, but the inclusion list (FOCIL) will strengthen anti-censorship capabilities: once a prover lists a transaction, even a small-scale, globally distributed group of proposers cannot exclude these transactions.
All of this points to the future of Ethereum's foundational layer: it will have stronger scalability and decentralization. Particularly, L1-based Rollups will benefit the most from these consensus upgrades, as L1 will be better suited to their transaction ordering needs. By ordering transactions on L1, the maximum extractable value (MEV) from L1-based Rollups (and native L1-based Rollups) will naturally flow to Ethereum block proposers, and this value can be burned, thus concentrating more value back onto ETH rather than flowing to centralized orderers.
Data Availability Layer (DA Layer)
Data availability (DA) throughput is key for Rollup scaling, especially for performance-oriented Rollups that need to support 100,000+ TPS in the future. Ethereum's Proto-danksharding (Dencun + Pectra upgrades) has already raised the target and maximum number of blobs per block to 6 and 9, respectively, achieving a blob data capacity of 8.15 GB/day (approximately 94 KB/s, 1.15 MB/block), but this is still insufficient. By 2030, Ethereum may achieve full danksharding, targeting 64 blobs per block (each 128 KB), which means approximately 8 MB/4-second slots (2 MB/s).
(Note: Proto-danksharding is a key technical upgrade in Ethereum's scaling roadmap, significantly enhancing network performance through the introduction of new data storage mechanisms. It serves as a transitional solution to Danksharding, with the core goal of reducing transaction costs for L2 solutions and enhancing data availability while laying the groundwork for future complete sharding technologies.)
Although this represents a tenfold increase, it still cannot meet the demands of performance-oriented Rollups like MegaETH for ~20 MB/s. However, Ethereum's roadmap includes more upgrades: achieving data availability sampling (DAS) through solutions like PeerDAS (expected in the second half of 2025 - first half of 2026), allowing nodes to verify availability without downloading complete data, combined with data sharding to raise the blob target per block to 48+. With ideal Danksharding and DAS support, Ethereum could achieve a 12-second slot with 16 MB data processing capacity, corresponding to approximately 7,400 simple transactions per second, and potentially reaching 58,000 TPS after compression (e.g., aggregate signatures, address compression). With Plasma or Validium (only on-chain state roots rather than complete data), it could be even higher. While off-chain scaling entails trade-offs between security and scalability (such as the risk of operator failure), by 2030, Ethereum is expected to offer diverse DA options at the protocol layer: providing complete on-chain data guarantees for security-focused Rollups and external DA access flexibility for scale-focused Rollups.
In summary, Ethereum's data availability (DA) upgrades are making it increasingly suitable for Rollups. However, it is important to note that Ethereum's current throughput is still far from sufficient to support high-frequency scenarios like payments, social interactions, and gaming. Even a simple ERC-20 transfer requires about 200 bytes of blob data, roughly calculating to about 20MB/s of raw DA bandwidth; while more complex transactions (like Uniswapswap) will generate larger state differences, increasing the required bandwidth to about 60MB/s! Relying solely on complete Danksharding technology will not meet this bandwidth requirement, so throughput improvements will need to rely on a clever combination of data compression and off-chain scaling.
During this period, performance-oriented Rollups will need to rely on alternative DA solutions like Eigen DA. These solutions can currently provide around 15MB/s throughput and plan to scale up to 1GB/s; emerging solutions like Hyve promise to achieve modular DA at 1GB/s and support sub-second availability. It is these DA solutions that will enable Web3 applications to have speeds and user experiences comparable to Web2.
The vision of Ethereum as a world ledger
“Ethereum aims to be the world ledger: a platform for storing human civilization's assets and records, serving as the foundational layer for finance, governance, and high-value data certification. This requires two core capabilities: scalability and risk resistance.” — Vitalik
By 2030, with core protocol upgrades and the evolution of Rollup-centric technology, Ethereum will be better suited for this role. As mentioned earlier, the full tech stack upgrades will support two types of Rollup models: one leaning towards 'deep Ethereum integration', focusing on security and trusted neutrality; the other leaning towards 'light Ethereum integration', aiming for extreme throughput and economic independence. Ethereum's roadmap does not mandate a single path but provides sufficiently flexible ground for both models to thrive.
Aligned Rollups: Ensure that high-value, highly correlated applications continue to receive robust security guarantees from Ethereum. Among these, L1-based Rollups can achieve Ethereum-level liveness, with L1 validators generating Rollup blocks simultaneously responsible for transaction ordering; native Rollups have Ethereum-level execution security, with every Rollup state transition re-executed and verified within L1; while native L1-based Rollups (or hyper Rollups, i.e., execution sharding) achieve 100% execution security and 100% liveness, essentially becoming part of Ethereum L1. Such Rollups will boost the value accumulation of Ethereum L1: MEV (maximum extractable value) generated by L1-based Rollups flows directly to Ethereum validators, and through the MEV burn mechanism, ETH's scarcity can be enhanced; invoking EXECUTE pre-compile functions to verify native Rollup's proofs requires gas, creating new value inflows for ETH. If in the future, most DeFi and institutional finance operates on a few aligned Rollups, ETH will capture the fees of the entire economy. Moreover, Ethereum's anti-censorship capabilities and MEV value capture mechanisms are two key pillars for it to become the 'world ledger'.
Performance Rollups: Allow the Ethereum ecosystem to cover all categories of blockchain applications, including scenarios requiring large-scale processing capacity. This type of chain is likely to become a bridge for mainstream adoption, though it may introduce (semi) trust elements, but still relies on Ethereum as the final settlement layer and interoperability hub. The coexistence of performance-oriented and aligned Rollups enables the Ethereum ecosystem to support both top-tier security and top-tier throughput applications simultaneously. L2's heterogeneity and interoperability benefit Ethereum more than harm it: although these Rollups have a weaker economic tie to ETH, using ETH as a gas token, transaction medium, DeFi valuation unit, and core asset for new applications in high-capacity environments can still generate new demand for ETH. Notably, the aforementioned Ethereum DA layer may support 100,000+ TPS, indicating that even performance-oriented chains may eventually return to Ethereum's DA layer rather than relying on modular alternatives (for reasons like ecological synergy, trusted neutrality, and simplification of the tech stack). Of course, if they need to save costs or enhance performance, they can still choose other DA solutions, but the key point is: advancements in Ethereum's DA layer, data compression, and off-chain data management will continue to enhance L1's competitiveness.
Exceptions mainly involve Rollups deeply tied to trusted enterprises (like Coinbase's Base and Robinhood's L2 network, Robinhood Chain), where users trust these enterprises more than trustless systems (this effect is particularly pronounced among new and non-technical users). In such cases, the credibility and accountability mechanisms of associated enterprises become the primary guarantees, allowing these Rollups to maintain competitiveness while weakening Ethereum alignment, as users are willing to 'trust brands' like in Web2. However, their adoption largely depends on B2B trust; for instance, JPMorgan's chain may trust Robinhood Chain more than Ethereum and the stronger guarantees offered by aligned Rollups.
Moreover, the gradual integration of middle-ground Rollups towards the two extremes may well be a natural result of the maturation of these two paths. The reason is simple: intermediate solutions neither achieve high alignment nor top performance. Users focused on security and composability will choose Rollups closer to Ethereum; while users valuing low costs and high speeds will lean towards optimal performance platforms. Additionally, as pre-confirmation technologies evolve, slot speeds increase, and L1 finality accelerates, the performance of aligned Rollups will continue to improve, and the demand for 'moderate performance' will further decline. Overall, the former is more suited for institutional DeFi, while the latter is more suited for retail-grade applications.
Successful Rollups require substantial resource investment (from attracting liquidity to maintaining infrastructure), and by 2030, integration will become more frequent, with strong networks absorbing the communities of weaker ones. This trend is already becoming apparent. In the long run, an ecosystem composed of a few core hubs with clear value propositions will outperform hundreds of homogeneous systems.
Special thanks to mteam, Patrick, Amir, Jason, Douwe, Jünger, and Bread for their valuable discussions and feedback!
