Ethereum’s Survival Strategy: Scaling L1, Killing L2s, and Betting on Memecoins?
Ethereum is entering its "grow-up or die" era. After years of drifting in a sea of Layer 2s, Ethereum is pivoting back to its Layer 1 roots—an intentional move that could either restore the network's dominance or further fragment its ecosystem.
In the latest Bankless roundtable, David Hoffman sits down with Jon Charbonneau, Bread, and Andy8052 to unpack Ethereum’s strategy shift, why long-tail L2s are being abandoned, and what on-chain culture looks like in a world ruled by meme coins and perpetual Degen energy.
The Layer 1 Renaissance
Ethereum’s new tagline—“Scale the L1. Scale blobs. Improve UX.”—is more than a catchy slogan. It’s a cultural signal. As Jon Charbonneau points out, it’s a clear prioritization of Layer 1 scaling over Layer 2 dreams. The Ethereum Foundation is no longer content being just the base layer for others to innovate on; it wants to reclaim DeFi activity and value flow directly on mainnet.
This has consequences. The long tail of L2s—the clones with no meaningful differentiation—are now on notice. As Bread puts it, “Some of these teams are going to have to shut down… you're going to die off if you weren’t meaningfully different from mainnet.” The survival filter is sharpening.
Even Andy, ever the fun-maxi, shrugs: if L1 scaling kills your L2, your L2 was probably already dead.
ETH’s Identity Crisis
But it’s not just about infrastructure. The group explores a deeper identity crisis around ETH the asset. Is ETH money? Is it digital oil? Should it be the center of value accrual or just the utility token for a great tech stack?
Bread argues ETH needs to earn the right to be money by being useful and fee-generating first—then we can tell the “blue money cult” story. Jon counters that winning on tech and usage is the only way to even have a shot at ETH becoming sovereign money. Trying to beat Bitcoin with an economics-based narrative is a losing game.
David aptly sums it up as a “Rorschach test”—everyone projects onto ETH what they want it to be, depending on their bias.
The Meme Coin Canon
The discussion shifts to culture—and culture right now is memecoins. Solana, Pump.fun, snipers, shitter tokens, degens who don’t sleep. Andy, once an Ethereum loyalist, now runs most of his activity through Solana. Why? Because it’s where the fun is. And fun equals demand.
As Bread puts it: “You buy ETH on Base because you want to ape 10k into a shitter protocol. That’s demand. That’s moneyness.”
ETH once held this spot—during ICOs, DeFi, NFTs. But it ceded cultural momentum. And it’s unclear if it can win it back without radically improving its UX and infrastructure for on-chain degen activity.
Hype’s EVM Gambit
HyperLiquid’s attempt to bolt an EVM onto its perps platform is also dissected. It’s not performant yet—just 1/30th of Base’s throughput—but its tight integration with a thriving exchange and a war chest of tokens to incentivize users could make it a real contender.
Still, Jon is skeptical: “It’s tough to build a general purpose EVM chain that’s truly differentiated right now.”
The Gorilla in the Arena
The episode ends with the now-viral hypothetical: can 100 men beat one gorilla? The crew gamifies the problem (coordination, willingness to die, vision teams), ultimately concluding that yes, humans win—if they accept casualties.
It’s a cheeky analogy, but the metaphor holds for Ethereum. To survive, the chain must stop being afraid to take risks, make hard calls, and face down existential threats with intent.
Final Thoughts
Ethereum’s return to Layer 1 is not just technical. It’s philosophical. It’s cultural. It’s existential. It’s trying to reclaim its role—not just as a settlement layer, but as the center of on-chain life.
Will ETH become the reserve asset again? Or will it fade into commoditized irrelevance as users chase fun and frictionless UX elsewhere?
As always in crypto: the builders build, the memers meme, and the markets will decide.