Devs introduce Ethereum R1 layer-2 scaling solution

A radical of developers wrong the Ethereum ecosystem, operating independently of the Ethereum Foundation, person announced Ethereum R1 — a layer-2 (L2) scaling solution for the Ethereum web that does not see a autochthonal token.

According to the announcement, the task relies wholly connected donations, does not person task funding, and does not person immoderate pre-mined token allocations oregon a governance token. The project's squad wrote successful a May 1 X post:

"General-purpose L2s should beryllium commodities — simple, replaceable, and escaped from centralized dependencies oregon risky governance. Ethereum R1 is our reply to that telephone — the rollup grounded successful credible neutrality, decentralization, and censorship resistance."

"Most L2s contiguous are acting much similar caller L1s than an Ethereum scaling solution — backstage allocations, opaque governance, and centralized control," the developers continued.

The announcement points to expanding concerns wrong the Ethereum assemblage regarding the existent absorption of galore layer-2 scaling solutions, which immoderate presumption arsenic perchance misaligned with the interests of the basal layer

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Ethereum's L2-centric approach: unsocial worth proposition oregon exploitation?

Ethereum's Dencun upgrade successful March 2024 importantly lowered fees for its layer-2 networks. By September, gross connected the Ethereum basal furniture collapsed by 99%.

As a result, transaction costs connected the Ethereum web basal furniture dropped to a five-year low of astir $0.16 per transaction successful April 2025, owed to a deficiency of request for artifact abstraction connected the basal layer.

Ethereum's transaction fees are determined by request and web postulation — higher request and web postulation construe into higher fees for the basal furniture and much revenue.

Ethereum’s basal furniture gross collapsed successful Q1 2025. Source: Token Terminal

While critics proceed to reason that this provides perverse incentives for layer-2 networks to turn astatine the disbursal of the basal layer, protocols proceed to reason that Ethereum's galore layer-2 networks are a feature, not a bug.

Anurag Arjun, co-founder of the unified concatenation abstraction solution Avail, told Cointelegraph that Ethereum's layer-2 attack gives users a virtually unlimited fig of high-throughput chains to take from, arsenic opposed to the singular one-size-fits-all attack employed by monolithic blockchain protocols.

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