Logan Jastremski, investor and co-founder of Frictionless Capital, said in an interview on Might 20 that Ethereum “is usually lifeless” and that “second layer (L2) networks have been a failed experiment.”
The technical argument introduced by Jastremski was that L2 would act just for knowledge compression:
I at all times noticed them as knowledge compression, as a result of if you concentrate on blockchains, that is what they are surely. What’s a transaction? All a transaction is is a sure variety of bytes. I am sending you 10 {dollars}. That’s represented in 5 bytes that I’ve to propagate to the whole blockchain. And all an L2 does is say: I can compress these 5 bytes to at least one byte.
Logan Jastremski, inversionist.
From that studying, Jastremski maintained that the worth proposition of L2s by no means made sense: if their actual operate is to compress knowledge, a sequence with larger capability than these networks would try this job higher and on a bigger scale. “If you wish to use blockchain compression, why not apply it to a high-performance chain? There you possibly can compress extra knowledge.
Moreover, Logan maintained that Ethereum didn’t “decline” for technical causes however as a result of its early adoption would have been pushed by financial incentivesnot by design superiority.
I feel Ethereum is usually an artifact of people that made cash on it within the early days, together with me. However from an institutional standpoint and from a product use case standpoint, Ethereum is usually lifeless in my thoughts. I feel it’ll proceed to die slowly and I feel it’s the most overvalued asset on the planet.
Logan Jastremski, inversionist.
Vadim, researcher and developer of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, rejected the technical foundation of that thesis. For him, Jastremski confuses the impact with the aim, since L2 don’t exist to compress knowledge however somewhat to inherit the safety of the Ethereum mainnetand compression is a secondary consequence of the financial mannequin of knowledge availability, in response to Vadim.
L2s pay Ethereum for settlement safety, not knowledge effectivity. Compression is a aspect impact of the economics of knowledge availability, not the objective.
Vadim, researcher and developer.
What does the on-chain knowledge of the Ethereum ecosystem present?
In distinction to what was said by the investor Logan, and as CriptoNoticias has been reporting, the enhancements launched by Pectra (Might 2025) and later Fusaka (December 2025), allowed the primary community to succeed in all-time excessive ranges (ATH) in transactions and energetic accounts whereas the community maintains minimal charge ranges.
April 2026 was the month during which Ethereum processed its highest variety of month-to-month transactions in its complete historical past, with a complete of virtually 73 million operations. As of Might 21, this metric displays about 42 million transactions, so the fifth month of the 12 months most likely represents a drop in comparison with April.
Nevertheless, since final January, after the ATH in energetic accounts exceeded 15 million, on this statistic the development grew to become damaging month after month till immediately. On the time of this writing, the primary layer of Ethereum registers about 6 million energetic addressesin response to knowledge from the Develop the Pie platform.
And the L2?
The exercise metrics of Base and Arbitrum, the 2 most used Ethereum L2s, present a sustained drop of their on-chain knowledge.
Base, for its half, reached its historic most of transactions in November 2025 with virtually 453 million processed that month. Final April marked 235 million, a drop of 48%. As of Might 21, the determine stands at 165 million, which initiatives a good decrease month-to-month closing.
Arbitrum adopted an identical trajectory. Its historic most was 123 million transactions in February 2026. Within the first 21 days of Might processed lower than 30 million, a drop of greater than 75% from that peak.
Likewise, the energetic addresses of each networks additionally they’re falling month by month as seen within the following graph. On the time of this writing, Base registers 4 million energetic addresses and Arbitrum about 1.46 million.
A attainable clarification for that drop is the reducing worth and efficiency enhancements that the Ethereum community itself has seen in current months, which would cut back the inducement to function on secondary layers.
If that studying is right, the decline of L2 wouldn’t mirror ecosystem failure, as Logan urged, however somewhat a shift of exercise towards the bottom layer.
