# On Mainnet and rollups

Source: https://warpcast.com/shazow.eth/0xc68f31d6
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/On-Mainnet-and-rollups?index=0x67f637e38f98b7365abbe9230fdbacda72ac62a5b49b71ad4c311ef40ccbcf8376a3479b
Submitted by macbudkowski.eth on 2025-04-09 UTC, 1 upvote, 0 comments

## Summary

The author argues that the alternative to rollups is not all activity moving to Ethereum mainnet, but a proliferation of separate L1s that share no security and interoperate only through traditional bridges. Per the text, Ethereum's rollups should make launching a rollup strictly easier, more secure, cheaper, and more profitable than launching a fresh L1. The article holds that mainnet still needs to scale, since many reasons to build an alternate L1, such as a different VM or sequencing, would not be met by mainnet scaling alone. It also argues that rollups should pay Ethereum for benefits such as stage 2 security, better interoperability, and better sequencing, with payments rising as those benefits become real.

## Article

It's wrong to assume that the alternative to rollups is that all activity goes to mainnet. More realistic alternative is more L1's that don't share security and don't interoperate aside from traditional bridges.

IMO the entire point of Ethereum's rollups is to obsolete needs to launch new L1's. It should always be strictly easier, more secure, cheaper, and more profitable to launch a rollup rather than a fresh L1.

This doesn't mean that Ethereum mainnet does not need to scale, it does! But there are many reasons why someone may want to launch an alternate L1, so even if mainnet is scaled to infinity it will not be able to capture those reasons without rollup technology (eg different VM, sequencing, etc).

It also doesn't mean that Ethereum shouldn't capture value from rollups, it should! The more rollups are able to *actually* benefit from Ethereum (real security benefits with stage 2, better interop, better sequencing, etc) the more a rollup should be willing to pay to the L1 for these privileges.