Scalability on Ethereum Market Research Center

Ethereum Scaling: An Evolving and Strengthening L1–L2 Relationship

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 02:12:06 +0000

Ethereum isn’t moving away from L2s—it’s entering a stronger phase where L1 scaling and L2 innovation advance together. As Ethereum scales directly on L1, L2s are freed to differentiate, specialize, and innovate beyond pure scaling. The result is a more resilient, flexible, and bullish Ethereum ecosystem with deeper interoperability and broader use cases.

There have recently been thoughtful discussions about the evolving role of L2s within the Ethereum ecosystem, particularly in light of two important developments:

Understanding the Implications of the Ethereum Gas Limit Increase

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 11:22:20 +0000

Executive Summary

The Fusaka upgrade is an upcoming Ethereum hard fork (tentatively scheduled for late 2025 / December 3, 2025) that bundles a set of protocol enhancements intended to scale Ethereum in a measured, low-risk way. (QuickNode Blog)
A key change expected is a substantial increase in the block gas limit (various sources point to increases up to ~150 million gas units). (Bankless)
Alongside the gas bump, Fusaka emphasizes data availability innovations (PeerDAS) and incremental changes to contract execution models. (QuickNode Blog)
From a business lens, the gas limit increase is effectively an expansion of Ethereum’s transactional capacity “headroom”, lowering pressure during peak times, stabilizing costs, and enabling more ambitious applications — all while requiring vigilance on validator / infrastructure demands, decentralization, and new equilibrium dynamics.
In the following sections, the report (1) contextualizes the upgrade and the gas limit change, (2) unpacks business implications and benefits, (3) highlights risks and tradeoffs, (4) offers strategic recommendations, and (5) presents a visual summary / infographic concept.

Context & Technical Background (Business-Relevant)

Ethereum’s Road to Fusaka

Ethereum’s scaling roadmap (often framed as the “Surge / Verge / Purge / Splurge” phases) includes periodic upgrades to improve throughput, data availability, and state management. Fusaka is part of this sequence. (LBank)

The New L1s Are Just Alternative Chains, Not L1 Killers

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:27:12 +0000

The “new corporate L1s” being launched by payments and stablecoin giants aren’t substitutes for a general-purpose, credibly neutral base layer like Ethereum. They are purpose-built execution environments whose economics, governance and risk envelopes look and feel like specialized infrastructure—powerful for their use cases, but fundamentally different animals. If anything, their success increases the surface area where Ethereum matters.

1) What corporate L1s are actually optimizing for

When a Stripe, Circle, or Tether builds a chain, they’re optimizing first for their own product constraints: throughput for a specific asset type (stablecoins), integrated compliance controls, predictable cost, and tight coupling to off-chain treasury/settlement systems. Circle says this explicitly with Arc—an “open Layer-1…purpose-built for stablecoin finance” designed to meet “enterprise-grade” demands. That is not a general-purpose mandate; it’s a payments-and-settlement mandate with programmable hooks.

Understanding EIP-7732: Parallelization and Deterministic Execution in Ethereum

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 10:09:27 +0000

EIP-7732 proposes a significant architectural change to Ethereum by decoupling transaction ordering from execution to enable safe, deterministic parallel execution. Today, Ethereum processes transactions sequentially, limiting scalability. EIP-7732 introduces a new role—the SKR prover—who, after the block is built and transactions are ordered, commits to a valid execution trace. This allows validators to re-execute transactions in parallel, drastically improving performance while maintaining consensus integrity.

The proposal aligns with Ethereum’s broader modular design goals and complements Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS). It supports rollup scalability by ensuring deterministic transaction ordering, reduces MEV-related risks, and enhances validator efficiency. Long-term, it also lays the groundwork for execution sharding.