Chainfeeds Summary:
Rollups have dominated Ethereum's execution layer, but L2 tokens as a whole have underperformed, revealing a disconnect between growth and value capture, with current revenue levels failing to support their high price-to-earnings ratios (P/E).
Article source:
https://x.com/Solofunk/status/2003506093205385426
Article Author:
Patryk
Opinion:
Patryk: For many years, the Ethereum L2 ecosystem generally expected that technologies such as Arbitrum, Optimism, ZKsync, and Polygon would become the infrastructure for enterprise-grade and application-specific Rollups, driving large institutions worldwide to adopt on-chain technology. However, some important cases in 2025 showed a different direction: for example, stablecoin chains such as Stripe's Tempo and Circle's Arc chose L1 architecture instead of L2, indicating that Rollups are not the only on-chain path for large institutions. At the same time, liquidity and activity further concentrated on leading L2 platforms such as Base and Arbitrum One, while smaller Rollups struggled to maintain effective use. Rollups such as Pirate Nation and Polygon zkEVM were completely abandoned this year, highlighting a reality: while the startup threshold for Rollups continues to decrease, it does not necessarily mean that a product-market fit (PMF) will be found. These trends are likely to continue into 2026. L2 transaction costs will continue to decline, and in the long run, its transaction volume may exceed 99% of the Ethereum mainnet. Leading Rollups will continue to dominate, with institutions preferring to issue tokenized products on networks with existing liquidity and user bases. However, new Rollups like Robinhood Chain and MegaETH could still introduce variables. Overall, in 2026, L2 tokens will compete for enterprise and institutional attention while focusing more on improving revenue generation capabilities to cope with the current market environment. Arbitrum had one of its strongest years in history in 2025, expanding its lead across several key metrics, securing multiple Arbitrum Chain partnerships, and clarifying its long-term growth and self-sustaining development path. The success of Arbitrum One and its leading position in the DeFi space are reflected in its $16.83 billion TVS, $2.82 billion DeFi TVL, and $8.52 billion stablecoin market capitalization. Despite strong fundamentals, L2 tokens like ARB remained under pressure in 2025, with their circulating market capitalization ranking slipping from 45th to 59th. In response, the Arbitrum Foundation and ArbitrumDAO have developed a long-term strategy aimed at achieving sustainable growth and eventual self-sufficiency. ArbitrumDAO is building a digital sovereign nation, generating revenue through digital resources such as blockchain space and execution environments, and creating compound growth in demand through ecosystem investment and economic zone development. In 2025, Optimism's growth momentum slowed, reflected in the OP token price. Its circulating market capitalization ranking slipped from 50th to 81st this year. Even so, Optimism, along with Arbitrum, still constitutes a leading Ethereum L2 ecosystem. In November, the OP Stack supported 62% of all L2 transactions, accounting for 14% of the total crypto ecosystem transactions. Optimism also achieved a significant milestone in 2025: Ronin chose to migrate to the Optimism Superchain in September, rather than other competing ecosystems. However, some high-profile projects launched in the past year, such as Ink, Soneium, and Unichain, have still contributed limited revenue to the Optimism Collective. After its launch in 2026, Ronin is expected to quickly become the most important game-oriented open chain in Superchain. However, as market demands for "revenue generation capabilities" continue to rise, coupled with Arbitrum's continued investment in this area, Optimism faces increasing competitive pressure. This pressure may prompt Optimism to refocus on the open mainnet, one of the few assets in the Optimism Collective capable of capturing 100% of the sorter's revenue and possessing extremely high potential returns.
Content source 
