In the past few days, Azu, the feeling of Linea is no longer just 'another L2 to exploit', but more like experiencing what the daily life of future Ethereum users will look like on a testing runway in advance: you don't have to worry about which L2 your assets are on, on-chain transactions only require signing once in the wallet; you can complete a whole set of DeFi operations directly with stablecoins even without ETH; large-scale incentive distributions no longer rely on Google Sheets, but are calculated by the ZK proof network. Putting these pieces together, you will find that Linea's latest round of upgrades is actually helping to reconstruct the 'hidden complexity' of the entire Ethereum multi-chain ecosystem.
What resonates with me the most is the Ethereum Foundation's recent introduction of the Ethereum Interop Layer (EIL) plan: the goal is to make all compatible L2s, including Linea, Arbitrum, Base, look 'like a single chain' in the eyes of users, where users only need to sign once in their wallets, and all cross-chain transfers, interactions, routing, bridging, and settlements are hidden behind the protocol and wallet. EIL is designed on the account abstraction of ERC-4337, emphasizing no introduction of new trust parties, with all cross-L2 logic written into verifiable smart contracts. This means that once EIL and wallet front-end integration is completed, with one click of confirmation in MetaMask, you might simultaneously mint an NFT on Linea, transfer USDC from another L2 to pay, and then return the excess balance to the mainnet, making the entire process for ordinary users as simple as 'just click', with the underlying multi-chain logic fully covered by the protocol.
On Linea's side, it has actually laid the groundwork for this experience: starting in the first quarter of this year, it launched the ERC-20 Gas feature, allowing users to pay gas with stablecoins or $LINEA instead of solely relying on ETH. Technically, Linea utilizes eth_sendBundle to send transactions privately to the sequencer, which is responsible for exchanging ERC-20 for the required settlement form in the background, with users only seeing 'as long as I have stablecoins in my wallet, I can directly complete an on-chain operation'. For someone like me, who often only holds USDC and USDT and has little ETH, this change is very practical: previously, to do something on a new chain, I had to bridge ETH over specifically for gas, but now I can directly bridge stablecoins or $LINEA up, and the wallet can help me bundle the network fee into the transaction, reducing several steps of hassle in the onboarding process.
If EIL is about unifying multi-chain experiences at the protocol level, then the 'wallet-native economic system' built by MetaMask and Linea is helping users move their funding entry forward. The mUSD stablecoin launched by MetaMask this year is itself a native dollar asset within the Consensys ecosystem, initially choosing Ethereum mainnet and Linea as the first launch networks, and through collaboration with Stripe subsidiary Bridge and M0 protocol, achieving a market cap of over fifty million dollars within a few months. From the user's perspective, this means I can directly deposit real-world income into a stablecoin that is deeply integrated with MetaMask, and then use EIL + ERC-20 Gas to bridge different L2 usage scenarios without having to move assets between different chains each time. In this combination, Linea's role is no longer merely that of a 'slightly cheaper L2', but the first stop in the wallet-side funding closed loop.
These 'invisible experience upgrades' ultimately lead to one question: are the things I do on this chain being fairly recorded and seriously rewarded? In this regard, Linea's recent integration with Brevis to create ProverNet can be seen as bringing 'reward distribution' into the ZK era. Brevis's recently released white paper mentions that their ProverNet has already run over 250 million ZK proofs, covering a bunch of applications like PancakeSwap and MetaMask, while Linea's 10-week Ignition plan has distributed a total of 1 billion LINEA to LPs on protocols like Etherex, Aave, and Euler. For users, the change behind this is that incentives are no longer just scripts running behind closed doors by the project team, attaching a 'calculation table' in announcements, but instead feeding on-chain behavior into a decentralized ZK proof market, generated, aggregated, and verified by a bunch of provers to allocate rewards. Who participated, how much they participated, and how much they should receive—all logic is written into verifiable proofs. Even if you don't understand what the specific circuits look like, you instinctively feel that this way of rewarding is much more comfortable than 'trusting some Excel'.
Meanwhile, the story Linea previously told about 'turning institutional funds into a network foundation' has recently transitioned from promotional PPTs to financial reports. SharpLink, a company listed on NASDAQ and known for its ETH treasury strategy, directly stated in its third-quarter financial report: the company's revenue increased by over 1100% year-on-year, from last year's 900,000 dollars to now 10.8 million dollars, with net profit reaching 104.3 million dollars, supported by their deployment of over 800,000 ETH across various yield strategies. More importantly, in an announcement at the end of October, SharpLink separately allocated 200 million dollars worth of ETH, planning to gradually deploy it on Linea in the coming years through ether.fi and EigenCloud, leveraging the infrastructure and ecosystem combinations of this zkEVM L2 to amplify on-chain ETH yields. For someone like me who has been in the retail circle for years, seeing a publicly traded company use very traditional 'financial report language' to tell you: 'I'm moving the ETH treasury to Linea because this chain offers better yields and structured risk control', is more convincing than any marketing tweet.
From the perspective of technological evolution, what Linea has pushed forward in recent months is not just the economic model, but also the alignment of the entire chain and Ethereum itself. In the latest technical update from CMC, it can be seen that Linea's codebase has just undergone the Beta v4 / Pectra upgrade, aligning all the changes from Ethereum's hard forks in Paris, Shanghai to Cancun, Prague at once, and introducing the new Maru consensus client, using QBFT for deterministic finality; next on the roadmap, by Q1 2026, it aims to launch Type-1 zkEVM, achieving complete equivalence at the Ethereum bytecode level, allowing developers to migrate mainnet contracts with zero modifications. Furthermore, by the second quarter of 2026, they plan to increase throughput from the current level to about 5000 TPS, creating space for high-frequency DeFi and chain games through faster small field proofs and pre-confirmation mechanisms. Individually, any one of these points may not be considered 'groundbreaking news', but together, they reveal that this chain genuinely aims to be the 'Ethereum-native, long-term online scaling layer', rather than just engaging in a promotional activity and leaving.
From the perspective of an ordinary user, if you are just preparing to use Linea now, or have been deterred by previous 'airdrop sentiment' and 'community complaints', I would recommend approaching it again with a 'new cycle' mindset. My usual approach is as follows: first, select an asset that I originally intended to hold long-term in the Ethereum ecosystem, such as a portion of ETH or stablecoins, and transfer it to Linea via the official bridge or a familiar cross-chain bridge to experience the difference of ERC-20 Gas—intentionally perform a few operations without ETH to feel how 'you can complete the entire process relying solely on stablecoins' and how convenient that is; then, choose one or two DeFi protocols that have confirmed participation in long-term incentives and may integrate EIL and ZK incentive infrastructure, like those old friends that have appeared in the Ignition program, and through regular use, finish the on-chain actions related to Brevis, Ignition, and subsequent incentives along the way; finally, shift my wallet perspective from 'I am using a standalone L2' to 'I am rehearsing the experience of a future multi-chain unified entry', paying attention to the upcoming progress of EIL in wallets, as well as the funding pathway from 'reality to on-chain' built together with MetaMask, mUSD, and the Linea ecosystem.
For developers or deeper DeFi players, the current attraction of Linea is no longer simply about 'lower transaction fees and ongoing incentives', but rather that it is making synchronized efforts in three directions: first, catching the Interop standard led by the Ethereum Foundation, establishing a solid foundation for a 'multi-chain unified entry'; second, linking real usage, protocol value, and incentive distribution through mechanisms like ERC-20 Gas, dual burning, and Ignition; third, bringing in institutions like SharpLink that have real financial backing to transform the long-term ETH treasury into a basic network revenue. For me, Azou, as an old user, the greatest significance of this combination lies in: the seemingly trivial operations I perform daily on Linea—transfers, market making, lending, minting NFTs—are no longer just 'behavioral data' waiting for the next airdrop, but are genuinely participating in a production line attempting to reconstruct Ethereum's multi-chain experience.
As for whether to 'get on board', everyone's risk preferences are different, and I won't give any conclusive advice. But if you originally planned to stay long-term in the Ethereum ecosystem and are already fed up with the disjointed multi-chain experience, then at least one thing you can do right away: reserve a small position in your wallet to experience a round of ERC-20 Gas + ZK incentives + future EIL combinations on Linea. Many times, what truly changes your cognition is not how many research reports you read, but when you first discover: it turns out I only signed once, and the money just flows back and forth between several L2s, and the whole process happens on the underlying infrastructure like Linea.
