This feels like the quiet admission no one wanted to make. For years, “L2s are scaling Ethereum” was treated as an article of faith. Now it sounds more like a narrative that overstayed its welcome. If L1 is genuinely scaling, fees stay low, and gas limits keep rising, then many L2s aren’t extensions of Ethereum. They’re businesses renting Ethereum security where convenient, and retaining control where it matters. That’s not evil. But let’s stop pretending it’s the same thing as “scaling ETH.” The uncomfortable part: a lot of value accrued under the assumption that L2s were inevitable infrastructure, not optional products. If that assumption breaks, so does a chunk of the ecosystem’s self-justification. Maybe the future is simpler a stronger L1, and L2s that earn relevance by doing something genuinely different, not by borrowing Ethereum’s legitimacy.