I believe the following companies and teams launching L2 blockchains on Ethereum gives the blockchain the critical momentum it needs to eventually emerge as the world's default settlement layer:
β’ Coinbase β Base (OP Stack; Azul upgrade with Base-native clients and a multi-proof system)
β’ Robinhood β Robinhood Chain (Arbitrum L2; public testnet live, tokenized asset focus)
β’ Robinhood / WonderFi β WonderFi L2 (ZKsync Elastic Network; now under Robinhood after the WonderFi acquisition)
β’ Kraken β Ink (OP Stack / Superchain; mainnet live)
β’ OKX β X Layer (migrated from Polygon CDK / validium architecture to OP Stack)
β’ Bitget β Morph (consumer-focused Ethereum L2; mainnet live and integrated with Bitget)
β’ Upbit / Dunamu β GIWA Chain (OP Stack; testnet live, mainnet planned)
β’ Crypto dot com / Cronos β Cronos zkEVM (ZKsync ZK Stack; Ethereum L2)
β’ Ant Digital (Alibaba) β Jovay (Ethereum-compatible L2, TEE ZK dual-proof design, RWA focus)
β’ HashKey β HashKey Chain (OP Stack; compliance-friendly L2 for onchain financial products)
β’ Bybit / BitDAO β Mantle (modular Ethereum L2)
β’ Uniswap Labs β Unichain (OP Stack TEE block builder / MEV controls; mainnet live)
β’ Aevo β Aevo L2 (OP Stack EigenDA)
β’ Paradex β Starknet appchain
β’ DeGate β DeGate V1 (ZK-rollup, Loopring fork)
β’ Sony β Soneium (OP Stack / Superchain; mainnet live)
β’ Deutsche Bank β Project DAMA 2 (ZKsync-based institutional tokenization architecture)
β’ Worldcoin β World Chain (OP Stack / Superchain; verified-human priority blockspace)
β’ Celo β Celo L2 (formerly an independent L1, now migrated to an OP Stack Ethereum L2 with EigenDA, which is secured by restaked ETH)
β’ Abstract β Abstract Chain (ZKsync ZK Stack; consumer chain from the Pudgy Penguins / Igloo ecosystem)
β’ Lens β Lens Chain (ZKsync Avail; social appchain)
β’ The Sandbox β SANDchain (Ethereum ZK L2 for creators and gaming)
β’ ApeCoin / Yuga ecosystem β ApeChain (Arbitrum Orbit chain)
For a company looking to develop its own blockchain, the real choice is between running a sovereign L1, with all the permanent costs of consensus, validation, security and infrastructure, or running an L2 blockchain that uses Ethereum as the backend ledger.
Celo is the clearest example.
When Celo was an Alt-L1, it had to fund its own consensus system. Validators had to be paid whether the chain was busy or empty. Security was a permanent fixed cost.
After moving to Ethereum as an L2, almost all of those functions were delegated to Ethereum, while Celo still has its own user-facing blockchain. It still has fast confirmations, cheap transactions and scalable execution. But it no longer has to maintain a sovereign consensus system forever. Celo, for its part, reported a 99.8% reduction in its operational expenses by outsourcing consensus to Ethereum.
So raw economics is why Ethereum becomes the world's backend ledger.
The L2s, meanwhile, become the front-end blockchains, serving the massive array of diverse corporate needs.