On April 29, 2025, Coinbase announced that the Ethereum Layer2 network Base has reached the first stage of decentralization (Stage 1). This is another Layer2 network added by Ethereum to reach the first stage of decentralization after September 2024, and it has also triggered widespread speculation in the community about the possibility of Base issuing native assets.
According to data from L2Beat, as of May 15, 2025, there are a total of 7 Layer2 networks on Ethereum that have reached the first stage of decentralization, namely: Base, Arbitrum One, OP Mainnet, Unichain, Scroll, Ink and Kinto.
△ Current status of Layer2 network (Photo source L2BEAT)
What is the decentralization stage of Layer2
The term Layer2 Stage originated from a post by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin on the Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians forum on November 2, 2022. The reason for dividing Layer2 into decentralization stages is that the Layer2 network in the early stages of development has not yet achieved full decentralization, and developers should be given a grace period to develop until the network achieves full decentralization over time. The characteristics of the Layer2 network that has reached the first stage of decentralization are: the smart contract contains "fraud proof or validity proof scheme", which prevents developers from publishing invalid state roots. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin once said that Layer2 that has not reached the first stage of decentralization will no longer be regarded as the network layer of Ethereum. Because the era of touting Rollup as multi-signature is coming to an end - the era of encrypted trust has arrived.
This means that for the Ethereum community, whether a network is considered a layer on Ethereum is not only a technical issue, but its more important significance lies in whether it can determine whether the network relies on the Ethereum mainnet to ensure security.
For the three-stage technical guide of Layer2 decentralization, please refer to: https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/proposed-milestones-for-rollups-taking-off-training-wheels/11571
Layer2 project development milestones
2017 ~ 2020
Representative project: Plasma
2021 ~ 2022 Year
Representative projects: Optimism and Arbitrum
2023 to date
Representative projects: ZK-Rollup, StarkNet, zkSync and Scroll
Significance for the Ethereum ecosystem
Setting a decentralized development stage for Layer2 is essentially still for Ethereum to achieve better scalability and security.
According to Vitalik Buterin's roadmap, the Layer2 network, which has reached the first stage of decentralization, needs to open up third parties to participate in transaction sorting to enter the second stage of decentralization (Stage 2). It can also issue native assets as governance and incentive tools to replace the multi-signature system and expand the participation of validators. The implementation of the airdrop plan is more likely to further activate the application development and user activity of the Ethereum ecosystem.
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