This week, the Ethereum ecosystem has been rocked by a $654 million ETH switch by the Ethereum Basis. This triggered intense scrutiny over developer compensation, transparency, and management, culminating within the public resignation of core developer Péter Szilágyi and renewed criticism of governance practices.
Concurrently, Polygon’s AggLayer improve has confronted launch delays and community instability, intensifying debate about Layer-2 alignment, fragmentation, and the Basis’s assist for exterior L2s.
These developments, alongside POL token migration volatility, ongoing struggles to steadiness mainnet centralization with L2 sovereignty, and response to the Basis’s earlier govt restructuring, have added contemporary urgency to the disputes over Ethereum’s future path and the sustainable progress of its scaling ecosystem.
Ethereum household feud
Ethereum’s scaling structure underwent a change from a technical sidebar to a political economic system when Vitalik Buterin praised Coinbase’s Base for “doing issues the suitable method,” weeks after Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal assumed the CEO position on the Polygon Basis, issuing warnings about Ethereum’s “existential” layer-2 (L2) path.
The query rising from competing visions is whether or not Ethereum will standardize how L2s earn and settle worth, or watch liquidity fragment into parallel programs that route round somewhat than by the mainnet.
The strain crystallized throughout three developments in mid-2025. Nailwal took management of Polygon Basis on June 11 amid a technique reset, positioning the community as extra unbiased from Ethereum’s rollup-centric orthodoxy.
Polygon shipped AggLayer v0.3 on June 23, advancing chain-agnostic interoperability with Polygon PoS, which was slated to attach by the top of the third quarter, however didn’t occur as of press time.
Buterin’s public endorsement of Base in September reignited debates over whether or not Ethereum’s management favors particular L2s, amplifying earlier friction when Nailwal questioned the low recognition from Ethereum core builders and warned that anti-L2 sentiment may fracture the ecosystem’s social material.
Knowledge from L2BEAT exhibits Arbitrum and Base command the biggest shares of worth secured on Ethereum layer-2s, with OP Mainnet and Linea trailing.
The Polygon zkEVM stays materially smaller than its Proof-of-Stake chain, each when it comes to whole worth locked and transaction exercise.
Dune sequencer revenue dashboards reveal that Base and Arbitrum generate the vast majority of web sequencer earnings after subtracting layer-1 knowledge prices, with Base persistently rating as a high revenue generator by late summer season 2025.
Buterin’s 2025 roadmap commentary facilities on simplification, mainnet resilience, together with privateness enhancements, and a layer-2 person expertise that depends extra closely on layer-1 safety ensures.
That steering establishes what Ethereum management considers “good L2 citizenship”: canonical fraud or validity proofs, reliance on Ethereum for knowledge availability, and alignment with rising requirements for mild purchasers and shared sequencing.
Polygon’s AggLayer pursues chain-agnostic shared liquidity, positioning the community adjoining to, somewhat than inside, Ethereum’s rollup orthodoxy.
Its Proof-of-Stake chain is migrating towards zkEVM validium integration, which makes use of various knowledge availability layers.
Three paths for charge seize and market construction
The subsequent six to 12 months will check whether or not Ethereum can standardize worth flows throughout competing layer-2 architectures.
In a soft-alignment situation with a 50% to 60% likelihood, the Ethereum mainnet captures 25% to 40% of the layer-2 gross charge income as enhancements in blob compression and knowledge availability stabilize prices.
Base and Arbitrum retain 60% to 70% of layer-2 web earnings, with OP Stack proliferation sustaining Base’s distribution benefit by Coinbase’s on-ramp infrastructure.
Polygon’s AggLayer connects its Proof-of-Stake ecosystem and CDK chains to drive cross-chain liquidity progress. Nonetheless, Ethereum-native transaction flows prioritize OP Stack clusters as a result of canonical settlement ensures.
POL token efficiency on this situation is dependent upon the ecosystem’s breadth somewhat than rollup orthodoxy credentials.
A fragmentation situation at 20% to 25% likelihood sees Ethereum mainnet>over 70% of layer-2 revenue share, with OP Stack standardization and cross-rollup bridging lowering friction for customers transferring belongings between chains.
Polygon tightens Ethereum alignment by ZK proofs and Ethereum>OP, and POL, derive their narratives from the profitability of the online sequencer, creating sensitivity to month-to-month revenue leaderboards that present Base, working with out a native token, setting user-experience requirements that strain tokenized rollups to justify their worth by income sharing, grants, or governance energy.
Polygon’s funding case improves if AggLayer drives composability that converts to retained liquidity somewhat than transient bridge quantity, unbiased of rating as the biggest pure rollup by orthodox definitions.
Monitoring AggLayer connection milestones and Proof-of-Stake migration progress supplies main indicators for this situation.
Builders optimizing for distribution confront a realistic calculation the place OP Stack and Base infrastructure win near-term person acquisition by streamlined on-ramps and L2 to L2 liquidity routing.
Groups prioritizing person expertise and cross-chain operability might outperform these targeted on doctrinal alignment debates, significantly as multichain person experiences stay difficult and community results favor the biggest distribution hubs.
Centralization and interoperability as structural forces
Coinbase’s Base receiving public reward from Buterin sharpens debates over company affect versus Ethereum’s social material, significantly as world regulatory frameworks, together with MiCA and FATF steering, favor KYC-friendly L2s with clear operational entities.
Polygon’s chain-agnostic AggLayer imaginative and prescient competes with OP Superchain and ZK rollup hubs in an interoperability arms race analogous to cellular platform competitors, the place walled gardens are contrasted with open liquidity meshes.
The Ethereum mainnet is positioned as foundational infrastructure somewhat than an unique settlement layer.
Consumer gravity concentrates in networks that resolve multichain ache factors, with Vitalik and Ethereum core researchers pushing for a simplified, layer-1-secured L2 person expertise.
If user-experience requirements unify round widespread light-client implementations and proof verification, community results compound benefits for the biggest distribution hubs, together with Base and Arbitrum.
Polygon’s various path is dependent upon AggLayer establishing ample cross-chain liquidity, enabling builders and customers to go for composability over canonical Ethereum settlement.
The end result determines whether or not Ethereum operates as a standardized settlement layer capturing predictable charges from aligned rollups, or as one choice amongst competing architectures the place liquidity and customers distribute throughout networks with various levels of mainnet dependency.
Sequencer revenue focus, blob utilization charges, and AggLayer adoption metrics by mid-2026 will make clear which path the ecosystem follows, and whether or not loyalty to Ethereum turns into a measurable financial parameter somewhat than a social-layer assumption.
