In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Arjun expressed that although Ethereum and speed-focused competitors with monolithic structures are essentially different products, Ethereum’s choice to scale via numerous L2 solutions offers a frequently underappreciated advantage:

“The unnoticed charm of this rollup-centric architectural roadmap is that it enables numerous teams to experiment with diverse execution environments and block times.”

This leads to the emergence of a varied set of high-throughput sidechains, instead of a single architecture on any monolithic layer-1s, the executive added. Yet, he cautioned that without genuine interoperability, transitioning between L2s would remain as intricate as transferring assets between various blockchain ecosystems.

Arjun’s stance clashes with the numerous critics of Ethereum’s L2-centric strategy, who argue that the network’s scaling solutions compartmentalize liquidity and are ultimately detrimental to the base layer. Critics contend that L2s are a major factor in Ether’s ETHUSD subpar price performance over the past year.

Transaction fees on the Ethereum layer-1 network dropped to a five-year low in April 2025, averaging around $0.16 per transaction. Brian Quinlivan, the marketing director at the Santiment onchain analytics firm, suggests that the fee reduction indicates diminished demand for the base layer and falling investor interest in Ethereum.

“The significant reduction in fees aligns with fewer individuals sending ETH and interacting with smart contracts,” Quinlivan wrote in a blog post dated April 16. He further added that these smart contract interactions include transactions in decentralized finance, digital collectibles such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other sectors of the digital asset market.

The decline in Ether’s base layer transaction fees and dwindling retail interest also prompted numerous institutional investors to cut back their Ether allocations and revise their price forecasts for the second-largest digital asset by market cap.

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According to Arjun, every unique blockchain base layer has its specific security assumptions, which pose significant challenges to interoperability between different chains. He stated, “Each has its specific set of validators and crypto-economic security. Hence, there’s a need to establish infrastructure such as light clients, which is a major general bottleneck.”

He further opined that bridging between different chains involves a multi-step procedure of communication amongst blockchain networks. This process not only incurs high costs and security risks, but also leads to the creation of fragmented pools of users and capital, as pointed out by the Avail co-founder.

Traditional efforts to achieve interoperability have been focused on enabling the transfer of liquidity between different chains. However, this approach has only intensified the fragmentation in the crypto ecosystem, while also creating cybersecurity vulnerabilities that have resulted in several significant hacks.

For instance, the Wormhole Bridge was targeted by hackers on February 2, 2022, resulting in a loss of $321 million. This incident is considered one of the most significant crypto hacks and sparked a series of similar attacks on other bridges in subsequent months.

Chain abstraction aims to enhance the user experience and interfaces of crypto networks and decentralized applications by abstracting the technical aspects of blockchain for end users. The ultimate objective of chain abstraction techniques is to offer users a more streamlined and unified blockchain experience, enabling them to interact across different chains using a single interface.

A case in point is the Chain Signatures feature of NEAR Protocol, which allows users to authorize transactions across various blockchain networks directly from their NEAR accounts using a single wallet. NEAR’s chain abstraction solution has been lauded by users and investors for its simplicity, and it is being touted as a potential base layer for all blockchain interactions in the future.

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