Aggregation Hub - Can Ethereum Feel Like One Chain Without Becoming One?

Hello everyone. Um, thanks all for joining. As you can see like our fireside chat topic is can Ethereum feel like one chain without becoming one. But I mean if you actually look at the topic uh you might think like we are talking about collapsing the whole you know like ecosystem onto one chain but that's not what it's about. It's about you know like we have fragmentation in a way because when L2s were born back in 2021 um its goal was to scale Ethereum.

Um but it also re in recent times it has led to a lot of fragmentation and this is what we want to discuss today because scaling through rollups bought us you know different ecosystems um different communities different governance models but at the same time it has separated the liquidity a lot.

So what what we would like to focus on is if Ethereum increasingly consists of this distinct ecosystems with their own communities incentives and visions. So what still holds all together as you know as one Ethereum. So Vitra before you you know are you ask me about you know technical fragmentation aspect I would like to begin with one question like did Ethereum actually fragment too much or we are missing this aggregation layer.

Yeah. Um I I don't think we fragmented too much. I think the diversity of the Ethereum ecosystem is actually for our benefit. you know the poorism value um that I think is a very strong property of the Ethereum community um is again for our benefit but we we have to be conscious um you know the protocol itself um you know the machine is blind but impartial but the the community shouldn't be we should be conscious and we should be against um ideologies that um don't allow for priority in my opinion. So you know yeah this kind of like conscious tourism and allowing uh diversity in the ecosystem and protecting it.

Perfect.

Um and yeah um so from this uh I will come to the first topic we have that's the technical fragmentation on the protocol IO. Uh and first of all I would like to talk about O2s. Um do do you ag what what L2 to choose? You know a lot of these O2s they they say they are solving the the same thing basically. Um so kind of users and developers are forced to to make these decisions.

Um what do you think about it?

Um I mean actually that's the most basic question actually we have to look at it. Um actually this whole discussion about fragmentation and L2 started with um Vitalic tweeting about fragmentation earlier this year like I think he made a tweet in February where he talked about you know how L1 has moved much more forward at a faster rate than how you know L2s have managed to scale.

Um back in 2020 when he made the road map for rollups it was like I think optimism was the first rollup that came in. M

and then Arbitrum followed them and by 2024 it was just couple of them but like 20 less than 20 and now it is like what 75 plus L2s that we have

and what they did was like first we have to see the good thing that they did was they bought in creativity in terms of technology. Um there are like various you know proving systems they have their own sequential model. So if you are a builder or if you are a person who is with technical curiosity they have actually contributed a lot in a in a very positive way to the Ethereum e ecosystem. But on the other hand what they have done is um you know they they managed disagregated the liquidity there is not a single combined liquidity unfortunately there is manual bridging there is lot of issues at the application layer you can see that way. So what what we need right now is you know the the focus coming back to L1's um because Ethereum per se itself is quite fast now right now it's also quite cheap um so now what now this missing aggregation layer is what we should now focusing on

h but like if we have one aggregator interface aren't we like back when we started uh when when there's a centralized interface that everyone uses um you know Then why even like we need Ethereum you know.

Mhm. I mean there is a very important distinction that we have to take care is this aggregation should be from the user experience point of view like I should not be able to like I should not be caring too much about which bridge I am using you know to go from one chain to another like all these complexities uh like this is where we need aggregation not at the layer of permissions not at the layer of you know like interoperably uh in a way where it is taking away from users their authority So nothing that compromises decentralization. It's more on the user experience layer. Um because as a builder right now if I have to build on multiple chains like I have to take care about configuration even though I'm building the same thing like I have to take care individually like if I have to deply on all the 80 chains it's like 80 different configuration 80 different interfaces and like similarly SDKs and stuff. So that's quite a painful uh you know like journey as a builder.

Okay. Um and so um I guess um my my next question um when so when there are multiple bridges, multiple L2s um like how do you imagine the future of the UX for such user that um doesn't want to to choose but still keeping the the atum diversity Is it you know

I think what I imagine is I think already back like from last November 2025 Ethereum Foundation itself has started working on this EIP I think 7,000 something I don't remember the exact EIP but they have already started working on aggregation

um so where it like they build a particular stack which which is consistent throughout and which helps them to have intent based systems as well so which is really useful So you just pass intents between the chains cross chains and then that that's what the builders can utilize. On the other hand like optimism is also building something optimism aggregation stack where they are trying to combine 30 chains together which are built on top of optack.

So that's also quite beneficial as well. So there have been like quite a lot of effort especially this year. I mean this is also the reason why we chose this topic for our hub because this is first of all a topic which is being talked about. Secondly like for this year at least I think it is also a priority for Ethereum Foundation. I think in their road map 2025 uh 2026 end was the goal to you know have good progress but I think since we are already towards the end of 2025 it might very well you know go on to

um next year. I think here one important thing to mention like you you mentioned the the foundation two times. Uh one thing I think we are doing pretty well is that there's no centralized entity that decides like what is Ethereum or what what do we do instead we have the EIP process and the ERC process and we create shared community standards that anyone can opt into but you are not forced to to do this. You you can even like fork off the chain. uh and and so I I think that that's very important um to to actually uh have the the open standards instead of having a foundation that that would decide uh how we do things.

Do you agree?

Yeah, I I definitely agree with that.

Yeah. Um

um so yeah um I I guess technically uh the the goal is quite clear uh like we we abstract the unnecessary complexity to the user and try to like make the guarantees visible without forcing to to you know study 20 hours uh on like how different bridges work right uh but L2s are just one piece of the infrastructure Then uh there's also the teams that operate the L2's brands communities you know each have their own governance uh there are various of founding so there's quite a lot of diversity but I think um uh we should also try to articulate the properties that are common between these and uh articulate what is Ethereum for us. So you know I I think the EF mandate was actually um step in the right direction with this where instead of keeping the the values implicit um the DF tried to articulate these values but I think it shouldn't be the EF actually it should be everyone else we should and I mean literally every single community member should for themselves articulate their values and exercise them and share share it with their culture. sure you know they are in their city with their community whatever. Um yeah uh

actually being on this topic we are getting to a very good like transition like we because I was talking about more about how builders are facing it difficult in terms of technical fragmentation but what we cannot ignore is also the social fragmentation part of it because if a uh if a chain settles on Ethereum but has its own users own ecosystem own way of doing things then having you know for example 80 ATL2s it feels like a competition like It feels like there is no like base is a competition to arbitrum or to optimism or to name all the other 80 chains. So how do you think you know this uh what makes it part of Ethereum beyond beyond the technical settlement relationship?

Mhm. So um of course on the technical level I I think uh respecting user sovereignity meaning that the user has control over their data their assets is is definitely one one of the very core properties and I I think this connects to to privacy. When you control your data you also control what you choose to reveal. So sovereignity, privacy and decentralization I think is is what connects. And for me if um a project does not share these values it may be on Ethereum be like deployed on Ethereum but I don't think of it as part of the the Ethereum stack or or the the culture you know because you can build a totally centralized application on top of Ethereum and then I think you should just choose a centralized database or maybe you are using only some of the properties that's that's of course fine as well And you know um I think again this is um a great thing about Ethereum.

Um you don't have to do everything at once. You you you can use some of the properties uh that the chain provides. You know for example um transparency for for institutions I think is a big one nowadays. Um, and you you can still still use the chain without being required to to do do everything. But to actually be be part of the community, I I think you should strive to uh to to uh exercise the the values I mentioned, sovereignity, decentralization, privacy.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean so far we had talked about you know how like detrimental for example fragmentation is but which parts of you know social fragmentation actually makes Ethereum stronger

actually uh I'm interested we have quite a few people here in the audience um like have you experienced the negative side of fragmentation like where there was too many options and you could couldn't choose can you raise your hand if if you experienced this yourself Okay, there's like two two hands up. And have you experienced the positive side of this having many options to to choose from? Um, has that ever been to to the benefit? Okay, that's about the same amount of hands. Um, I I was hoping for for more hands uh on on the second question to be honest.

Um but but yeah um I I think that yeah it's very important to to connect and coordinate uh but but keep uh the diversity in in Ethereum you know.

Mhm.

Yeah. I think we pretty much covered what we wanted to do you know start as a discussion in a way. Um of course we we have our hub right there like hub number 10. So you can always if you have more questions about this you can come and discuss anything about it. We are there.

Um it's a I think it's a very interesting topic um per se um to discuss uh and there are a lot of things that could be discussed. We try to touch it very superficially here you know what are the problems at surface level but as I said if you're more interested just come to us talk to any of us we are like 10 plus team members there um yeah but now if you have any specific questions we are open to that um and would love to hear from you guys and before the we get the questions let me do a little bit of propaganda on on Friday I actually have a lightning talk called the principles of Ethereum where I actually try to to do this and articulate the principles. So if you found it interesting, you you can come as well.

There are several questions. I don't know if we can pull them up uh from the Mircat application. There we go.

There.

There we go.

Yeah.

Can you see them from your side?

Yeah.

Okay.

Uh should there be more top- down governance to maintain interoperability and growth without fragmentation? Um I don't think so. I I think uh every single one of us should uh exercise the values but we shouldn't have an institution or some top down governance that enforces it you know not sure if you have some some more to add to this

yeah I think the first question is definitely more aligned with what you said um I will first actually take the third question which is like chain abstraction um so yeah regarding chain abstraction um I think there is actively uh this was also part of EIP where they started working on it where they wanted to bring most of the fragmented L2s on the same umbrella. Yes, it definitely solves most of the UX issues but everything pass that is going mostly against decentralization. I think this is also reason there are like this multiple things. Now earlier this year in Khan the uh Ethereum enterprise alliance was um like formed EZ inter Ethereum economic zone sorry and they are all trying differently to solve this issue of decentralization but I see you know that we are also falling into the rabbit hole. Now again we have optimism doing its own thing.

We have this chain abstraction which is trying to do its own thing. Now we have also EZ. So it's like how L2 started. L2 started with three chain. It rose to like 80 chains.

Now we have three chain abstraction or aggregation concepts and we might again going towards you know a centralized approach of aggregation. So I think what we need not only from the foundation level because as FOA mentioned foundation is just you know a guiding principle but the people who are involved in that I think they should be careful that we do not repeat the same mistakes of 2024 and try to you know keep the virtues alive in that sense.

Um is there a risk of misalignment between VC backed out and Ethereum as crops designed credible neutral network? Um yeah yeah yeah I I think so there was a lot of discussions about uh one of the client teams being actually funded uh primarily by a single VC. Um, but I think we've actually managed quite well when we look at how the core core dev schools work. Um, and to be honest, I I I haven't been there for some for quite a while, but even when there are client teams that are backed by by the VCs, we are able to to coordinate and keep our values even though there are there are some um uh some teams that that maybe are trying to capture some of the the value uh and restrict freedom, you know.

That's perfect. I mean for the last question by the way whoever asked very nice question um actually um L1 fragmentation in a way because I think there is a running joke that we cannot have we can never have enough L1s um and the reason why Ethereum should lead uh like the movement that pushes aggregation is because Ethereum is a prime example right now that we have a layer on top of a layer which is L2s and if Ethereum can successfully solve this problem which is like this diversification It's a beautiful divers diversification but it comes with its own pain points. So if Ethereum manages to solve this which I'm pretty sure next year could be the case that we totally get done with aggregation. Um and the way how they do it it's either by you know forming a committee like EZ um and like making a coordination layer or or through any other way like pro doing some technical stuff like abstraction. So this might be a good example and I think more interchain collaborations in a way you know like as simple as you know bridging solutions like if you can do that as smoothly as possible then I think it's already putting out an example.

So there could be many many such examples that I guess Ethereum ecosystem has the possibility of putting it out and definitely setting an example. Perfect. the more.

Oh, there's one more.

Can you feel that?

Um,

yeah. I I think uh that L1 scaling when will take away some some users and and liquidity from the L2. Yeah.

Yeah. I think and also like we should not look as you know L1 scaling as a detrimental step. I think this was the main problem where people took Vitalics to it in a wrong direction. what he meant was we we are f now we need to change our focus as to how we started it. So I think L2s will not die.

It's just that they have to change their approach towards how they are currently continue to scaling. I think they have to focus more on aggregation rather than scaling. So otherwise yes there is a chance they can get cannibalized.