Erik Voorhees: “ETH is still the king, and I don’t see it being dethroned" The founder of ShapeShift and Venice AI is asked if Ethereum was a “sustainable ecosystem.” He replies: “I think [Ethereum] is more than sustainable. I think it is the clear winner of the smart contract innovation. It actually wasn’t the first mover in smart contracts, but it was the first one to achieve any sort of scale with smart contracts. What’s most important about Ethereum isn’t so much the first-mover advantage as much as it is the network effect it has had since it was released.” Erik continues: “I think both Bitcoin and Ethereum have achieved a network effect that is close to unassailable. People have gotten distracted with some of these other L1s, but if you look at metrics like where the developers are and where stablecoin volumes are, these are hard to fake metrics that are very important. They’ve always been predominantly on Ethereum. It’s not even close. I’m glad that other people tried to build L1s. The process of innovation and competition is really important. But ETH is still the king, and I don’t see it being dethroned. It has had various scaling challenges — the patchwork of L2s and the UX problems between them sucks. But I have a suspicion that Base is going to end up becoming the predominant L2 on top of the predominant L1 of ETH and that vertical is going to be very powerful and very strong. So yes, I’m always bullish on ETH in the same way I’m always bullish on Bitcoin.” However, Erik warns that if Base loses its permissionlessness it “will flounder and deserves to die”: “Base has designed things very well. It has gotten a lot of adoption and very quickly became the major L2 even though it was not the first mover. I think it’s gaining a network effect pretty quickly. It obviously has a very powerful corporate ally in Coinbase, and to the degree that Coinbase does not abuse that privilege, that’s a very good privilege. Abuse here means: if Coinbase tries to exert control over base such that it loses its permissionlessness, then it will flounder and deserves to die. But Coinbase has been a very good actor in this regard, and they deserve a lot of credit for demonstrating the principles of decentralization and permissionless innovation in several parts of what they do. Obviously the centralized exchange is not that, but it’s not trying to be either.” Source: @CoinDesk (Dec 2025)

This drama is a unique chance for Europe to stop acting like everything is fine. Crypto and blockchain can be a big part of the solution. It is much easier to design new models that are universal and common from the get-go than to keep fixing and trying to unify 27 different systems that are already incompatible with each other and affect millions of lives and billions in capital. Let’s build the future of universal EU financial markets onchain. And let’s start today, not “sometime.”

In case you missed it... we’ve had an incredibly useful feature running quietly on L2BEAT for a while now, but we never officially shouted it out. It's time to finally shine a spotlight on the Updates section.

seventy years of asking whether a machine could ever pass the turing test, and when one finally did, our first instinct was to have it write linkedin posts

We are glad to announce that the L2BEAT Interoperability Dashboard now supports @megaeth, @worldnetwork, and @unichain. Users can now track cross-chain flows, token distribution, and the underlying bridge infrastructure for all three networks. 🧵👇

Introducing the new State Validation page, which allows you to quickly compare the proof systems of existing projects.

TL;DR - I’m bullish on ETH and tired of the doomerism and complaining The gap between builder and market sentiment around Ethereum, and the actual potential of the Ethereum ecosystem, feels unreal right now. The reality is that Ethereum is the leading programmable blockchain by a large margin on most meaningful metrics. It has the deepest liquidity, the largest developer base, the most mature tooling, the most composable stack, the most developed DeFi ecosystem, etc. Yes, other chains have interesting things going on. I am not saying anyone should underestimate Solana, Canton, the L2s, or even Tron or BNB Chain. They deserve the respect and recognition they have worked hard to earn. But most of their unique advantages only matter because Ethereum is the benchmark they are differentiating against. Ethereum is the benchmark. Ethereum is the default. It is the largest credibly neutral universal settlement layer. It is the leader in this space. And yet the Ethereum community often spectacularly fails to acknowledge and communicate this advantage. Somehow, the dominant narrative has become one of unmet expectations, internal conflicts, lack of hope, frustration, and an uncertain future. I call bullshit on that narrative. If crypto is the infrastructure for the future financial system (spoiler: it is), then Ethereum is still best positioned to sit at the center of it: a shared settlement layer for regulated and unregulated DeFi, tokenized RWAs, L2s, ZK identity systems, and even collectible NFTs. Yes, other projects want to be this centerpiece too. But today they still need to prove they deserve to be considered serious contenders in that race. Ethereum already has its starting number. I know token prices are not where we want them to be. But this reminds me of old Vitalik's post asking whether crypto had earned the market cap it had back then. I approach that question a bit differently than he did, but I think it is still a very valid question. Did crypto earn its valuation back then? Has Ethereum earned today's valuation and price? In many ways, yes. We have built a lot of great tech. We have solved many hard problems. Progress in areas like ZK has gone far beyond what most of us expected five years ago. And yes, the institutions are coming. But do we know how they are supposed to make money once they arrive? Can we explain where and how crypto gives them material improvements over legacy technology - enough to produce real savings, better efficiency, or higher margins? Is what we have built compatible with their tech stacks and compliance requirements? Do we have solid business cases for them? And if you’re not a fan of institutions, can you explain how we are replacing them in a way that lets me recommend a DeFi product to my friends without their money somehow ending up funding North Korea? Why should they abandon those institutions and go crypto? And is your argument valuable enough to justify the crypto valuations you expect? Personally, I can answer most of those questions positively. But the answers are not obvious or very solid. In many cases, we are still at the beginning of the journey, not the end. So I do not expect prices or valuations to behave as if we had already reached the finish line. There is still a ton of work to do, a lot of things to build, and a lot to prove. But today, more than at any point in the past, I am optimistic that we will be able to answer those questions soon-ish. It feels like we are in the "Trough of Disillusionment" phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle, and we’re starting to climb the "Slope of Enlightenment". Since 2016, my thesis for crypto has been simple: the IT infrastructure for finance - or more generally, for value exchange - is mostly risk and cost. It is rarely a unique competitive advantage. So it makes sense for many actors to share that risk and cost instead of each owning and maintaining it for themselves. Today, more than ever, I believe Ethereum is the best possible candidate for that common, shared IT infrastructure and it offers the strongest ecosystem to build on (together with L2s). If you made it this far, thank you. A like or RT would be much appreciated, if only to justify the time I spent composing this ragepost. ;)

Today is a big day for all @Starknet fans: its proof system is finally 100% reproducible from the sources, verified by L2BEAT ✅ Starknet no longer risks demotion to Stage 0 in 70 days, and the red warning is gone 👇See what we did in this thread👇

Silence, vibe-dashboarders! Today, L2BEAT releases the Privacy page. We visited Ethereum's privacy protocols and scrutinized their CROPS 🌽.

Polish startup ecosystem booming

Base Azul is active, and Base is now multi-proof! State proposals can be backed by two proof types: either an AWS Nitro TEE attestation or a Succinct SP1 ZK proof. TEE proposals are whitelisted, while SP1 proof submission is permissionless. Mechanics 🧵 👇

The road to decentralisation can be bumpy. Nearly two months after its announcement, Scroll completed its governance transition, replacing the independent 9-of-12 Security Council with a 3-of-4 multisig of Scroll team operators. Scroll drops from Stage 1 to Stage 0.

Damn, I take just one week off and you somehow managed to break ETH and ZK at the same time.

How do Ethereum's 3 big privacy protocols, Tornado Cash, Railgun & Privacy Pools, actually differ? We have some colorful attributes that show the key differences. Here's the comparison:

we're looking forward to welcome @donnoh_eth & @l2beat again – you've enriched every edition so far 🫶 he'll co-live with us onsite and speak at Protocol Day about "native proof verification" for less risk & simplification 🙌

Why even decentralise the sequencer? We just shipped some additions to the Sequencing sections of the projects that have decentralised sequencer setups to answer the question: if part of the sequencer set is censoring you, how long until your tx actually gets in? Live for @gnosischain, @aztecnetwork & @0xPolygon. 🧵

more and more of this is needed around the world. In my experience, in many cases, people in public authorities and financial institutions do not have a problem with DeFi as such. The issue is that, in their minds, crypto still means “buy Bitcoin low, sell high”

The May 2026 ecosystem recap is here. Updates, infrastructure milestones, and governance decisions, all in one place 🧵👇