Recently, layer2 has finally broken the silence and made a strong comeback. Tokens such as $OP, $ARB, and $METIS have shone brightly, reminiscent of the Show Time before the upgrade of Cancun.

Why did the "internal competition" of layer2 truly begin after the Cancun upgrade, and how will the market landscape of layer2 evolve after the upgrade? Next, let me share my thoughts:

1) The implementation of the EIP4844 Proto-Danksharding proposal in the Ethereum Cancun upgrade will give a "quality" boost to layer2 Rollup projects.

By introducing the new data structure Blob space, it has iterated the limitations of relying on calldata to store data in the past, while also enhancing the Data availability capability of the Ethereum mainnet.

Compared to the full node storage structure of calldata, Blob is designed for temporary storage by some nodes, which can significantly increase the data submission limit of layer2 to the mainnet in a single transaction, expand its TPS, and improve data storage efficiency while reducing storage costs. The enhancement of Data availability capability is due to the one-month temporary storage, which is more than sufficient to handle the 7-day fraud proof time window of OP-Rollup.

As a result, the transaction volume submitted by layer2 to the mainnet in a single transaction will be greatly increased, and the cost per user will also significantly decrease. Before the Cancun upgrade, layer2 boasted about its TPS, but most of it was in a testing environment. On the contrary, users experienced poor gas fee erosion, making them feel that layer2 did not live up to its name.

After the Cancun upgrade, with no performance bottlenecks from the mainnet, layer2 players can no longer use the mainnet's limitations as an excuse. TPS, Gas, and other hard metrics will directly become the test, reshaping the competitive landscape of layer2.

This is why I have repeatedly emphasized that after the Cancun upgrade, the competitive situation of layer2 truly begins;

2) After the Cancun upgrade, the internal competition in the layer2 market intensifies, and newcomers frequently challenge the existing landscape of OP+ZK.

The decentralization of the Sequencer has always been a focus of the market. It turns out that in the strong OP-Rollup track of layer2, the decentralized Sequencer has become a social consensus of the Stack alliance, a "soft decentralization".

However, despite criticism of Optimism's inaction on decentralization, Optimism's market success with OP-Stack seems to be able to reverse the situation. But can you say that OP-Rollup is the entirety of Rollup? Obviously not. The more reasonable market trend is that the success of OP-Stack will be further magnified, and the shortcomings of OP-Stack will naturally have other relay players.

In recent days, the decentralized Sequencer solution provider for layer2, @MetisDAO, has shown extraordinary performance in the secondary market, with a remarkable 7-day increase of over 100%, and its TVL lock-up data has also soared to nearly 540 million US dollars, approaching zkSync. Why?

The core business logic is simple: since OP-Rollup has not made progress on the decentralization of the Sequencer, as a relay, proposing a reasonable decentralized Sequencer solution is its market space.

Because the decentralization of the Sequencer is related to the credibility of layer2 transaction submissions and the security of layer2 transactions interacting with the mainnet. If we set aside the "foundation" issue, the TPS and gas fee rates after the Cancun upgrade seem to be "castles in the air". I do not deny the success of Optimism in the Stack strategy, but there will always be other disruptors to solve the decentralization problem of the Sequencer.

Metis operates multiple Sequencer backup nodes through POS staking, and the nodes compete for block rewards through an election mechanism, while malicious behavior will be punished by slashing. This POS consensus binds each Sequencer as a stakeholder into a community of shared interests, and the Metis Foundation uses token incentives to allocate 4.6 million $METIS tokens to incentivize Sequencer mining, new project deployment, and subsequent ecosystem development.

Compared to Optimism, Metis has a relatively low market value and does not directly confront OP. By focusing solely on the decentralized Sequencer, it can open up a broad market. Metis is just a recent eye-catching example. In my opinion, after the Cancun upgrade, the market size of layer2 will further expand, and emerging layer2 providers will have to compete with the two giants, OP and ZK, and will use all kinds of tactics to carve out new opportunities in the layer2 track.

3) Layer2 is gradually evolving into a modular form, and orthodoxy will be broken, and chivalrous layer2 will be replaced by a broader layer2.

I have mentioned in several articles before that the core of layer2 is the Data availability capability of Ethereum. If the full nodes of the mainnet do not participate in the data security verification of layer2, the mainnet actually becomes a "bulletin board", and layer2 cannot inherit the security of the mainnet. Therefore, layer2 that relies on Ethereum's Data availability capability is chivalrous layer2, while those that escape the scope of Ethereum's Data availability capability are broad layer2. (In a more radical sense, it can also be denied as layer2)

However, when the layer2 market reaches a certain scale, the pure chivalrous Ethereum layer2 orthodoxy may be broken. Just as the Fraud proof of OP-Rollup has not faced any practical battle-tested challenges and can be selectively ignored by the market. Technology is just one part of the business logic, and the market and ecosystem have the final say, just as Optimism can always work miracles in the name of optimism.

This means that after the Cancun upgrade, third-party Data availability solutions will invade layer2, including the third-party DA solution from @CelestiaOrg, the shared Sequencer solution from @EspressoSys, and so on. Although everyone is reluctant, the business logic of modular evolution will gradually break through the defenses that the Ethereum mainnet can hold.

The focus of the OP-Stack is to achieve a shared Sequencer. The more OP strategic alliances there are in the future, the greater the benefits it can capture through the Sequencer, and conversely, the more interests it will be involved in. This social consensus will become a new constraint outside of technology, firmly establishing Optimism as a leader; The focus of the ZK-Stack is to achieve a shared Prover system. Its own Data availability capability and third-party DA capabilities like Celestia, as well as the limited Data availability capability of the mainnet, will all belong to the strategic scope of ZK, and its development focus is the new multi-chain ZK map interface of layer3 Hyperchains. Who provides the Data availability is not the key.

Their interests determine that they can actually not care about where the Data availability is, and only Ethereum itself cares about it. Therefore, faced with Celestia's continuous encroachment on the Data availability market, Vitalik has called for Plasma+ZK, but OP+ZK, busy with strategic expansion, does not care about these. They only care about how large the layer2 camp covered by their Stack strategy is, after all, RaaS is the ultimate business model of layer2.

In conclusion, the layer2 track after the Cancun upgrade will be exceptionally exciting, whether it is the frequent swordplay of newcomers or the expansion of the strategic boundaries of layer2, it will stimulate the layer2 market to move towards "diversification" and prosperity.

The layer2 track will eventually become a highly modular market composed of a combination of ZK technology, OP framework, various DA solutions, various Sequencer services, various gas fee models, and so on.

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