The Ethereum mainnet (L1) has long faced high gas fees, low throughput (around 15-30 TPS), and network congestion issues, limiting its large-scale adoption. The 2024 Dencun upgrade (EIP-4844, introducing data blobs) significantly reduced Layer 2 (L2) fees, but L2 diverted mainnet activity, leading to a decline in L1 transaction volume and fee revenue (ETH price approximately $1,626-$1,793 in April 2025, down 45% from the 2024 peak). Meanwhile, competition from high-performance L1 chains like Solana (50,000 TPS) has intensified, forcing EF to refocus on L1 expansion to enhance mainnet efficiency, user experience, and value capture.
• Strategic shift (March-April 2025):
• Leadership restructuring: In March 2025, EF appointed Tomasz Stańczak (Nethermind CEO) and Hsiao-Wei Wang as core researchers to serve as co-executive directors, freeing Vitalik Buterin from day-to-day management to focus on long-term research (e.g., privacy, EVM efficiency).
• New goals: On April 29, Stańczak and Wang published an article clarifying the three main technical focuses for the next 12 months: L1 mainnet expansion, data blob expansion, and improvement of L2 and application layer user experience. This marks EF's shift from a 'Rollup centralization route' to a balanced focus on both L1 and L2.
• Community feedback: X posts show strong community reactions, @0xngmi questions 'Has EF given up on the Rollup route?', @ryanberckmans argues that L1 expansion will not replace L2, but rather be complementary; @BTCBitcoin_ETH believes L1 expansion will enhance mainnet value capture and alleviate the 'L2 fragmentation' issue.
• Why focus on L1 expansion:
• User experience pain points: High gas fees on L1 (peak $7.50 vs. $0.15 on L2), complex wallet management, and slow confirmation times hinder non-technical user adoption.
• Economic pressure: L2 diversion results in reduced L1 fee revenue, putting pressure on ETH prices (approximately $1,626 in April 2025).
• Competitive threat: L1 chains like Solana and Avalanche (4,500 TPS) attract developers, EF needs to improve L1 performance to maintain dominance in smart contracts.
• Technical foundation: Pectra upgrade (activated on May 7, 2025) lays the groundwork for L1 expansion, such as a 40% gas limit increase and EIP-7702 account abstraction.
2. Specific L1 expansion measures by EF (2025)
EF promotes L1 expansion through protocol upgrades, technical optimizations, and research proposals, aiming to enhance transaction throughput, lower fees, and improve user experience. Key initiatives include:
• Pectra upgrade (May 7, 2025):
• Gas limit increase: Increase gas limit by 40%, allowing more transactions to be included in blocks, speculated daily transaction volume could rise from 1.329 million (April 23) to 1.5 million - 1.8 million.
• EIP-7702: Introduces account abstraction, simplifying wallet operations (e.g., social recovery) and lowering the barrier to entry for users.
• EVM optimization: Vitalik proposes improvements to the EVM contract language to enhance execution efficiency and reduce gas consumption.
• Impact: On April 29, on-chain activity (speculated at 1.3 million - 1.4 million transactions, 400,000 - 450,000 active addresses) may have slightly increased due to Pectra expectations, with further growth possible after May 7.
• Fusaka upgrade (late 2025):
• PeerDAS: Preliminary sharding technology that enhances data availability, supporting collaborative scaling of L1 and L2.
• EOF (Ethereum Object Format): Optimizes execution speed and reduces the operating costs of smart contracts.
• Impact: Expected to increase L1 throughput to 20-30 TPS, lower gas fees (speculated at 1-5 Gwei), attracting more on-chain activity.
• Glamsterdam upgrade (late 2025 or 2026):
• Focus on L1 and L2 interoperability, standardizing cross-chain addresses and transaction confirmations to improve multi-chain user experience.
• Speculation: May indirectly increase L1 activity as seamless L2 interactions raise mainnet anchoring demand.
• Technical optimizations:
• Relaxation of contract size limits: Increased from 24KB to 256KB, supporting more complex smart contracts and attracting developers.
• Dynamic adjustment of block gas limits: EIP proposal delegates gas limits to clients (e.g., Reth, Nethermind), allowing for higher throughput.
• EVMMAX testing: Reduced gas fees by 35%, may have already affected low-fee environments (1-10 Gwei) as of April 29.
• Vitalik's long-term proposal:
• Privacy enhancements: Anonymity transaction feature proposed on April 11 (enabled by default), which may increase on-chain privacy applications (e.g., credential verification for Sign Protocol).
• Zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) optimization: Improves L1 execution layer, reduces L2 expansion costs, and indirectly enhances L1 efficiency.
