Originally fromRyan Berckmans
Compiled / Odaily Planet Daily Golem(@web 3_golem)
The last era of the crypto industry dumped tokens through infrastructure, and its next era will choose the Ethereum L1+L2 model to build real businesses.
Travis Kling raised a question this week: "Is it now obvious that companies doing real work are not interested in L1/L2?" Robinhood was his first example. On the contrary, Robinhood is almost a perfect counter-example: When real companies make business decisions, they almost always choose the Ethereum L1+L2 model.
Robinhood chose an existing L1—Ethereum—and then built its own Ethereum L2 using Arbitrum technology. Robinhood Chain uses Ethereum blobs to ensure data availability, uses ETH as its native gas token, and its security is guaranteed by Ethereum.
Therefore, Robinhood did not reject the Ethereum L1+L2 model. On the contrary, the model is working as intended on Robinhood.
The 'buyers' choosing Ethereum have changed. In the past, crypto projects chose public chains and technologies to sell their own tokens. The emerging real-world on-chain economy is adopting the Ethereum L1+L2 model as the foundation for cash businesses.
As the composition of buyers changes, I believe Ethereum's advantages will become even more apparent.
The Old Crypto Economy Was Token-Centric
By "real businesses serving real users," I mean the traditional company model: building products that customers need, earning profits by serving customers, and increasing equity value based on those profits.
"Real users" here refers to consumer demand arising from ordinary economic needs, not speculative demand primarily generated by new token issuance. Crypto-native users are obviously real users. This is not a moral judgment on whether a protocol is useful or whether its developers are sincere; it's merely a distinction based on the goal of operating a real-world economy.
The value of a token can only come from three aspects:
- Cash: A reliable claim on future cash flows, akin to on-chain equity or bonds.
- Utility: Access, control, governance, or other privileged participation in a valuable system. Even without cash flow, a token that controls something important clearly has value.
- Monetary Premium: People hold the asset because they expect others to accept and recognize its value in the future. This asset is no longer merely a claim that must eventually be exchanged for something else but becomes a store of wealth—a terminal value asset.
The monetary premium is real but also extremely difficult to sustain. It requires deep network effects built on trust, liquidity, distribution, integration, and utility. Gold, the US dollar, Bitcoin, and Ethereum have all built different versions of this effect, while few other assets have achieved it.
Looking back, since programmable cryptocurrencies became popular, the vast majority of industry participants have not been ordinary cash flow businesses. Their economic goal has often been to sell a token whose value is primarily based on utility, an expected monetary premium, or a distant promise of future cash.
Sometimes, their plan is straightforward—launch a protocol and sell its token. Sometimes, it's more indirect—receive funding from a token-funded ecosystem and then liquidate the received tokens. Sometimes, a project does expect future profitability, but because the token's valuation is disconnected from any possible future cash, the actual business model remains confidence in the token itself.
This has become the norm because almost every project was doing something similar, but there have been exceptions.
Centralized exchanges are inherently cash transaction businesses and are naturally multi-chain, as adding another chain is just another deposit/withdrawal channel. Some stablecoin issuers are also cash transaction businesses; they initially served clients in the crypto space and are now rapidly expanding into the broader economy.
But these exceptions precisely prove the point: Businesses targeting ordinary cash transactions will choose infrastructure that maximizes their business, not their token value.
Different Business Goals Build Different Projects
A company's ultimate goal determines its technological choices.
If the goal is a cash transaction business, then the blockchain is infrastructure, and the selection criteria are to reduce risk, improve the product, reach customers, and protect profits. If the goal is token monetization, then there is greater freedom in blockchain choice. After receiving funding from a public chain, a company can choose to develop on the chain that funded it.
For example, if a protocol succeeds on Chain A, you can launch a similar protocol on Chain B to allow investors to price your token by comparison. Want to generate hype for a new token? Then a new L1, L2, appchain, gas token, governance system, or certain technology stack can become selling points.
The issue is not the diversity of technology itself; the crypto industry will continue to see an explosion of applications, protocols, L2 architectures, and specialized execution environments. The issue is the tendency to turn every new idea into a sovereign ecosystem (with its own L1 architecture, security validation, liquidity base, and monetary asset), regardless of whether the underlying product warrants it.
As the crypto industry now transitions toward cash businesses, various attempts will continue, but these will increasingly be built on shared infrastructure. Companies will specialize at the application layer or on L2s, while relying on the Ethereum L1 layer for settlement, security, liquidity, and monetary asset management. The result is not less innovation but a balance: more diversification at the edges, more concentration at the base.
The traditional crypto economy of the past often chose its architecture around the token it wanted to sell. The emerging on-chain economy will choose its architecture around the product it wants its customers to buy.
The Buyers Are Changing
The future of the crypto industry will be fundamentally different from the past because the "buyers" have changed.
The previous US administration heavily suppressed on-chain transaction development. This trend has now reversed. The GENIUS Act is now in effect, providing a legal framework for payment stablecoins, and Europe's MiCA regulatory system is fully applicable. Brokerages, payment companies, banks, asset managers, and governments worldwide are formulating strategies for stablecoins, tokenization, and on-chain transactions.
This doesn't mean all regulatory issues are resolved, but it proves that large institutions can attempt more blockchain business.
We are approaching the beginning of the S-curve of true crypto industry adoption.
When we emerge from this phase, the crypto industry and traditional finance will no longer be two distinct categories. Property, money, transactions, finance, identity, and trust will all be coordinated through networks of on-chain and off-chain systems. Ultimately, "Web3" will gradually fade away, just like "Web2," and everything will return to being simply the internet.
As this process advances, a larger proportion of crypto market participants will be real-world businesses serving ordinary consumers in the broader economy. This proportion will be reflected not only in the number of companies but also in capital scale, user numbers, asset size, and institutional influence.
These companies are no longer crypto projects looking for business models to support their tokens. They are businesses using crypto technology to optimize existing or emerging cash businesses. This, in turn, determines their technological choices. Infrastructure choices made for token economies do not well guide infrastructure choices made for cash economies.
Real Businesses Won't Build Infrastructure from Scratch
Typically, real businesses have limited budgets for risky infrastructure development. They don't want consensus mechanisms, cross-chain bridges, validator economics, gas, governance tokens, and liquidity bootstrapping to be six separate side businesses. Each additional component must create customer value or it becomes a burden.
The chain should serve the business, not the business serve the chain.
Some businesses are inherently multi-chain. Exchanges, wallets, stablecoin issuers, and certain asset issuers may need broad distribution. Even so, "multi-chain" rarely means every chain is equally important. Different chains usually have their own dedicated areas in terms of liquidity, issuance, settlement, product status, or deeper integration.
Most on-chain businesses need to make a special commitment to one chain or a few chains. Their choice typically takes three forms:
- When on-chain businesses need maximum decentralization, credible neutrality, risk minimization, or liquidity, they use Ethereum L1 services. L1 execution is more expensive because it bears the most robust shared environment.
- When businesses need control, customization, compliance, predictable unit economics, low latency, or high throughput, they build their own Ethereum L2. Because they can get a dedicated chain as they wish while maintaining a direct connection to Ethereum.
- When businesses don't need L1, and building their own L2 is not necessary, they typically use one or more established shared L2s. Base, Arbitrum One, Robinhood, and other mature Ethereum L2s have become common deployment platforms.
These on-chain businesses will still bridge assets, "export products," and connect to other networks. Having a home chain doesn't mean isolation. Import, export, and interoperability are also core components of on-chain business. But the home chain remains crucial; it determines the system's security, canonical state, liquidity relationships, operational model, and long-term dependencies.
Why is Ethereum's L1+L2 Model Still Valuable?
Ethereum separates the two major elements required by large enterprises.
The L1 provides a highly decentralized, credibly neutral, and highly liquid global hub. L2s provide a market for fast, low-cost, specialized, controllable, and customizable execution environments.
The L1 remains neutral, while L2s at the edge can adapt to different operators, jurisdictions, products, and users. L2s not only technically scale Ethereum but also politically scale it: organizations can operate their way without needing to ask the global hub (L1) to become their private chain.
Independent L1s can offer control and performance advantages. In some cases, complete sovereignty over consensus and data availability might be worth it for a project, but obtaining these isn't cheap.
A new L1 must create and maintain its own security system, validator or operator set, cross-chain bridges, liquidity, tooling, integrations, and reputation. It creates a new security and liquidity silo, increasing the cost and friction of interoperability with Ethereum L1 and the broader L2 economy (i.e., the dominant on-chain economic network).
For the vast majority of businesses, the value created by an independent L1 does not offset these costs.
A customized Ethereum L2 can obtain most of the commercial benefits a company seeks from adopting an independent L1: high TPS, control over execution, upgrades, fees, sequencing, latency, access rules, and product-specific features.
Furthermore, L2s provide advantages that independent L1s inherently lack: Ethereum for settlement and data availability, standard L1 bridges, proximity to Ethereum's assets and capital, and a foundation for increasingly trust-minimized interoperability.
L2 design is still crucial. Admin keys, upgrade keys, proof systems, and withdrawal guarantees determine how much security users have at any given moment. But even an L2 with control held by a few operators can provide users with a solid settlement foundation on Ethereum L1. Companies don't need to operate and maintain their own L1 to run their business.
An Ethereum L2 is both an independent blockchain and part of the Ethereum economic system. It can own and customize its execution environment while leveraging Ethereum for settlement, data availability, and interoperability.
L2s often deeply integrate ETH into their application economies, for example, as the native gas token. Canonical bridging patterns provide a trust-minimized path for capital and assets on L1 to enter the "local economy" of an L2. Each new L2 has a unique product interface, and Ethereum's network effects are strengthened.
Robinhood Made This Business Decision
Robinhood's development path is highly instructive.
It first launched its equity token on an established L2, Arbitrum One. After validating the product and understanding its needs, Robinhood launched its proprietary chain built using the Arbitrum platform.
This is likely to become a standard strategy for real businesses: build a business on an existing chain, then upgrade to a dedicated L2 when scale, product requirements, and unit economics justify it.
Robinhood Chain is tailored for financial services. Using Arbitrum technology, it offers 100ms latency, predictable transaction pricing, high throughput, and infrastructure customized to Robinhood's performance, security, and regulatory needs.
At the same time, Robinhood Chain is still an Ethereum L2. It uses Ethereum blobs for data availability and ETH as native gas. Its official bridge to Ethereum requires no third-party validator set. This is what it looks like when a real business builds a genuine on-chain product.
Robinhood didn't need to launch a Robinhood gas token or convince the public it deserved a lasting monetary premium. Robinhood has equity; its economic gains come from customers, products, assets, transactions, and cash flow. The blockchain is just its infrastructure.
Using ETH for gas is a simple business decision. L2 services already pay for L1 services in ETH. ETH is liquid, widely adopted, and the system's native token. Using a proprietary gas token would add issues of distribution, liquidity, pricing, and legality for Robinhood, and launching a token wouldn't improve Robinhood's core product.
Robinhood's success will depend on its application layer and the off-chain business it enables, not on its efficiency in creating a new monetary asset. Therefore, it's inaccurate to say Robinhood built its own blockchain and rejected existing L1s and L2s.
Robinhood merely rejected sharing its dedicated execution environment with other projects, not Ethereum. On the contrary, it chose Ethereum as the parent chain for its proprietary blockchain.
Previously, Coinbase made a similar decision by launching Base. Coinbase is not an Ethereum advocate, and Brian Armstrong is famously more publicly enthusiastic about Bitcoin than Ethereum. Yet, when Coinbase chose infrastructure for its on-chain business, it still chose to become an Ethereum L2.
Base is the strongest evidence that Ethereum's L1+L2 model is not just theory. Coinbase's decision was based on business considerations, not ideology.
When companies build cash businesses instead of conducting token sales, they make business decisions. This dictates that they choose the infrastructure of the Ethereum L1+L2 model.
What Does This Mean for Ethereum and ETH?
This change in participant composition is extremely bullish for Ethereum.
Historically, the blockchain competitive landscape was largely shaped by teams whose incentives focused on token creation, ecosystem funding, and token valuation. Looking ahead, the blockchain competitive landscape will increasingly be shaped by companies optimizing for security, customers, control, distribution, liquidity, and interoperability—all to serve cash businesses.
This shifts demand toward Ethereum's "barbell" structure: L1 for maximum risk reduction and liquidity; L2 for scaling, customization, and operator control.
Ethereum evolved into a globally universal platform not by forcing all companies into the same shared execution environment, but by becoming the common settlement, security, liquidity, and asset layer underlying numerous environments.
This is also good news for ETH. ETH's success lies in building a monetary network and global trust. ETH is an excellent equity claim and the native asset of Ethereum's global settlement layer. Across the ecosystem, it serves as collateral, a liquidity asset, a treasury asset, a productive asset, and is becoming a terminal asset.
As more real businesses build on Ethereum, they will distribute ETH to more users, integrate it into more products, and put it to work in more places. This enhances ETH's liquidity and investor confidence, thereby strengthening the monetary premium, which ultimately evolves into an even larger network effect.
Robinhood is not an exception but a beacon.
Real businesses use Ethereum L1 when they need the most neutral, lowest-risk, and most liquid shared environment globally. When they need control, customization, and high performance, they build their own Ethereum L2. And when their business isn't yet large enough to justify its own blockchain, they deploy to established blockchains, often Ethereum L2s.
This is not because they are fans of Ethereum, but because they are making rational business decisions.
