A bunch of builders throughout the Ethereum ecosystem, working independently of the Ethereum Basis, have introduced Ethereum R1 — a layer-2 (L2) scaling resolution for the Ethereum community that doesn’t embrace a local token.
In accordance with the announcement, the undertaking depends completely on donations, doesn’t have enterprise funding, and doesn’t have any pre-mined token allocations or a governance token. The undertaking’s staff wrote in a Could 1 X put up:
“Basic-purpose L2s needs to be commodities — easy, replaceable, and free from centralized dependencies or dangerous governance. Ethereum R1 is our reply to that decision — the rollup grounded in credible neutrality, decentralization, and censorship resistance.”
“Most L2s at present are performing extra like new L1s than an Ethereum scaling resolution — non-public allocations, opaque governance, and centralized management,” the builders continued.
The announcement factors to rising considerations throughout the Ethereum neighborhood relating to the present route of many layer-2 scaling options, which some view as probably misaligned with the pursuits of the bottom layer
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Ethereum’s L2-centric strategy: distinctive worth proposition or exploitation?
Ethereum’s Dencun improve in March 2024 considerably lowered charges for its layer-2 networks. By September, income on the Ethereum base layer collapsed by 99%.
Because of this, transaction prices on the Ethereum community base layer dropped to a five-year low of roughly $0.16 per transaction in April 2025, attributable to a scarcity of demand for block area on the bottom layer.
Ethereum’s transaction charges are decided by demand and community visitors — increased demand and community visitors translate into increased charges for the bottom layer and extra income.
Whereas critics proceed to argue that this offers perverse incentives for layer-2 networks to develop on the expense of the bottom layer, protocols proceed to argue that Ethereum’s many layer-2 networks are a function, not a bug.
Anurag Arjun, co-founder of the unified chain abstraction resolution Avail, instructed Cointelegraph that Ethereum’s layer-2 strategy offers customers a just about limitless variety of high-throughput chains to select from, versus the singular one-size-fits-all strategy employed by monolithic blockchain protocols.
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