- The Ethereum Layer 2 community at the moment processes extra day by day transactions than the Ethereum mainnet.
- Base will lead this shift, with Arbitrum and OP Mainnet additionally including important day by day quantity.
- EIP-4844 considerably decreased rollup prices and decreased charge revenue for the Ethereum base layer.
Ethereum’s Layer 2 ecosystem has entered a brand new part. Rollup at the moment processes extra day by day transactions than Ethereum mainnet, turning the community’s long-term scaling technique right into a measurable actuality reasonably than a roadmap promise.
This milestone settles the throughput debate, however opens up a way more troublesome financial debate. Exercise has shifted upwards, mainnet charge revenue has weakened, and the market is now asking whether or not the income from L2 development will nonetheless move again to Ethereum or stay with rollup operators and purposes.
Exercise strikes up the stack
This alteration is now seen throughout the most important rollups. Information reveals that since mid-2024, tracked L2 networks have processed extra transactions per day than Ethereum mainnet, and the pattern will solely enhance into the primary quarter of 2026.
Base drove a lot of that enlargement. The variety of transactions per day exceeded 2 million on a number of days in early 2026, with Arbitrum and OP Mainnet every growing by lots of of hundreds of transactions. Scroll and zkSync Period additionally contributed massive volumes. Because of this, the mixed L2 ecosystem now processes a number of instances the variety of transactions per day on Ethereum mainnet on lively days.
Low cost rollups modified the mathematics
The March 2024 Dencun improve, particularly EIP-4844, accelerated that transition. Transactions that carry BLOBs scale back information availability prices for rollups, making low-fee execution far more sensible throughout buying and selling, gaming, and shopper purposes.
Nonetheless, reaching the identical effectivity comes at a price to Ethereum’s base layer. Since Dencun, mainnet charge revenue and ETH burn have sharply declined, weakening the previous mannequin that tied Ethereum’s worth on to costly on-chain exercise. Whereas rollups have change into cheaper and extra handy, every transaction contributed far much less to base layer income than related exercise in 2021.
Worth seize stays unresolved
In the meantime, financial points stay unresolved. Arbitrum nonetheless has the most important complete L2 worth locked in supply materials, with exercise centered on perpetual, yield merchandise, and liquid staking. However, ARB doesn’t robotically seize sequencer revenues in its present construction, so the worth for token holders stays depending on unresolved governance selections.
The bottom presents a unique mannequin. Coinbase retains the sequencer income from Base, making it one of many clearest enterprise buildings within the rollup market. Moreover, this reinforces the view that many L2s might evolve into enterprise ecosystems constructed round software income, reasonably than only a impartial scaling layer.
Current commentary on MegaETH factors in the identical course, describing a mannequin the place model and software economics drive the chain.
Ethereum nonetheless has a fee position beneath its operations. It’s the main collateral asset in a lot of the L2 economic system and nonetheless protects a variety of stacks. Particularly, the case for scaling seems a lot stronger than earlier than. Nonetheless, the case for worth seize stays extremely unsure, particularly as sequencer centralization, liquidity fragmentation, and bridging dangers proceed to form the L2 market.
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