Author: Nancy, PANews
With daily settlement costs of only a few hundred dollars—or even less—Layer 2 can leverage Ethereum’s security while retaining most of the economic value for itself. L2s are increasingly becoming a highly profitable passive business, reigniting market discussion around Ethereum’s value capture model.
L2 is thriving, while Ethereum only gets a fraction.
As Ethereum gradually becomes the secure foundation for an increasing amount of on-chain economic activity, Layer 2 solutions absorb vast volumes of users, liquidity, and transactions at extremely low costs. Although the Ethereum L2 space is highly competitive and many projects ultimately fail, the leading L2s that have truly succeeded are turning sustained on-chain activity into substantial revenue—earning them the well-deserved title of “money printers.”
According to Growthepie data, since the beginning of this month, the Ethereum ecosystem has generated $52.19 million in revenue. The top four chains are Robinhood Chain, Ethereum Mainnet, Base, and Polygon, with revenues of approximately $39.06 million, $7.32 million, $3.62 million, and $1.44 million, respectively, accounting for 98.5% of the ecosystem’s total revenue. Notably, Robinhood Chain saw a 1,266% month-over-month revenue increase, leading all chains and contributing the vast majority of the Ethereum ecosystem’s total income.
Looking at the data from the past seven days, very few chains have generated revenues in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—only Robinhood Chain, Ethereum Mainnet, Base, Polygon, and Arbitrum, which together account for 97.6% of total revenue.
From both monthly and weekly perspectives, liquidity and revenue capture in the Ethereum ecosystem are highly concentrated among a few leading chains, while numerous L2 projects are increasingly marginalized. Meanwhile, the traffic-siphoning effect of leading chains is becoming more pronounced: the more active the trading and the higher the user participation, the more effectively on-chain traffic is converted into actual revenue, further widening the gap between these leading chains and other L2s.
But the problem is that the more L2s earn, the less Ethereum benefits in return.
According to Growthepie data, over the past 30 days, the top three chains paying the highest L1 fees to Ethereum Mainnet were Robinhood Chain, Base, and World Chain, with amounts of approximately $18,000, $10,000, and $3,700 respectively. Compared to the millions or even tens of millions of dollars in revenue generated by leading L2s, Ethereum’s share of this income is negligible.
Take Robinhood Chain as an example. As one of the most active and highest-revenue L2s in recent times, Robinhood Chain also pays the highest L1 fees to Ethereum mainnet among all L2s. Yet, even so, the “rent” paid to Ethereum is nearly negligible compared to its own revenue. For instance, on September 4, Robinhood Chain’s daily revenue peaked at $8.36 million, while the fees paid to Ethereum during the same period amounted to only about $722.
In fact, with the rollout of Blobs, the settlement costs that L2s pay to Ethereum have further decreased, boosting L2 profit margins. Over the past 30 days, profit as a percentage of revenue reached 100% for Robinhood Chain, 99.8% for Base, and 99.6% for Arbitrum.
This means that, for leading Layer 2 solutions, the security and settlement services provided by Ethereum are becoming a very low-cost infrastructure. L2s can leverage Ethereum’s security to support large-scale on-chain economic activity while paying minimal settlement fees and retaining the vast majority of their revenue.
Enjoy security benefits at low L2 costs—how is Ethereum improving value capture?
L2 is capturing an increasing share of economic value, while Ethereum, as the underlying settlement layer, receives relatively limited revenue—sparking further market discussion about its value capture model.
Some have even suggested that if a Layer 2 solution can obtain the security, finality, and composability provided by Ethereum by paying only a small “rent,” then there is no need for blockchain projects to build a sovereign Layer 1—adopting a Layer 2 architecture is a more cost-effective choice.
Prominent DeFi researcher Ignas has raised a similar question. He points out that this business model—where the platform earns substantial profits while the settlement layer receives almost nothing—might indeed be problematic for Ethereum. Currently, Ethereum may be using low fees to attract TradFi into its ecosystem, planning to increase its take rate once user migration costs become sufficiently high. If the official roadmap truly includes a strategy of first attracting large volumes of L2s and then monetizing L1 once switching costs rise, this could be bullish for ETH. However, no such strategy is currently evident in Ethereum’s official roadmap.
Crypto KOL 0xTodd compared the security guarantees of L2s from the perspective of security budgets. He noted that the Ethereum network currently adds approximately 1,700 ETH per day, equivalent to about $3,050 in new ETH value per minute at the prevailing price. This issuance can be understood as Ethereum’s “security budget” paid to secure its underlying layer. In contrast, an L2 of Robinhood Chain’s scale reportedly pays only about 1.8 minutes’ worth of Ethereum’s ETH issuance cost per week, yet still gains robust underlying security by leveraging Ethereum’s vast validator network.
Lorenzo Valente, Director of Digital Assets Research at ARK Invest, drew a business model analogy comparing Ethereum, Solana, and Hyperliquid to McDonald’s, Chipotle, and In-N-Out. In his framework, Ethereum most closely resembles McDonald’s “franchise + landlord” model, achieving low-capital ecosystem expansion through the Rollup pathway while providing underlying security and settlement services for numerous Layer 2 networks. However, the issue is that after the implementation of EIP-4844, the price of blob space dropped significantly, and L1 has captured almost no value from Layer 2 activity.
However, this does not mean that Layer 2 scaling itself has no value for Ethereum.
Cryptocurrency researcher Lanhu noted that after the Dencun upgrade, blob capacity expansion has outpaced actual L2 demand, causing data availability (DA) prices to remain persistently low. As a result, the L2 business model is gradually evolving into “block space revenue minus low DA costs,” with most profits generated at the execution layer retained by the L2s themselves. In contrast, certain L2 tech stacks have already begun adopting revenue-sharing models, such as OP Superchain and the Arbitrum ecosystem, while Ethereum L1 still primarily charges fees based on data bytes and batches. From this perspective, the overall expansion of L2s supports Ethereum’s role as the world’s settlement layer—but this does not imply that Ethereum should indefinitely provide security premiums at extremely low costs.
In his view, to improve Ethereum’s current value capture, beyond waiting for Blob/DA demand to grow and drive data space rents back from negligible levels to more meaningful proportions, it is also necessary to explore pricing mechanisms at the protocol level that more directly align with L2 economic scale. Potential solutions include requiring L2s to make mandatory contributions based on net protocol revenue, setting minimum settlement fees tied to proof frequency, or forcing more high-value state to remain on L1. Additionally, ETH’s role within L2s could be further strengthened. Beyond serving as the default gas asset on networks such as Base, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Robinhood, ETH must also become an irreplaceable asset for staking, fee payments, and forced exits, thereby further enhancing its economic value capture within the L2 ecosystem.
Ultimately, Ethereum’s current challenge is not whether to develop L2s, but how to balance scaling its settlement layer with enhancing its own value capture. The more vibrant the L2 ecosystem, the stronger Ethereum’s network effects as a foundational settlement layer; however, if L2 growth does not translate proportionally into economic value for Ethereum, the actual value this prosperity brings to ETH remains an open question.