# L2BEAT is now ETHBEAT Source: https://x.com/ethbeat_org/status/2117913893796225035?a=Od1JuPpQeQRkLyRq50A&s=12 Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/L2BEAT-is-now-ETHBEAT?index=0x6aeb2d147e74353c8ae81f57be45b2cc59178c80ff3aa9842e3a81a26340f678419df6fe Submitted by tim on 2026-11-04 UTC, 2 upvotes, 0 comments ## Summary L2BEAT is renaming itself ETHBEAT, with a broader mandate to assess whether applications built on Ethereum deliver the chain's guarantees to their users, beyond its original focus on Layer 2 networks. The organization says its earlier work covered L2 dashboards, smart contract source code reviews, the Stages Framework, and governance participation in several L2 DAOs, and that it now also covers privacy, interop, tokens, and blob usage. It lists Layer 2s, Privacy, and upcoming Liquid Staking as core domains, and introduces a CROPS guide of projects that meet the CROPS principles. The stated mandate is to help people reduce their dependence on intermediaries and to fund the work without paid assessments. ## Article Today, L2BEAT becomes ETHBEAT. Our work now extends well beyond Layer 2s, and our new name and mandate reflect that. Where it started L2BEAT started more than five years ago with one goal: to shed some light on a new and quickly developing category of products built on top of Ethereum, the Layer 2s. Times were different back then. We were just past DeFi Summer and ahead of the NFT craze. Ethereum was having its comeback moment, but it faced scaling issues: gas prices during network congestion were crippling broader adoption. That’s where L2s came in, promising to scale Ethereum while inheriting its security guarantees. But did they? How we answered that question We tried to answer that question in many different ways: Tracking adoption. We built dashboards to track the growth of L2s, starting with TVL, later reframed as Total Value Secured (TVS), and expanding into activity and other metrics. Understanding how systems actually work. We examined the source code of deployed smart contracts to explain how projects implemented their promises onchain. We surfaced the gaps between those promises and the guarantees users actually received - the “training wheels” introduced to work around unresolved technical challenges. Developing and maintaining standards. Through our risk assessments and the Stages Framework, we made the tradeoffs of using L2s more visible. We tracked progress toward removing training wheels and pushed for higher standards across the ecosystem. Monitoring changes. We built a monitoring system to detect changes to the smart contracts behind the projects we cover. Our researchers review and classify those changes, keeping assessments up to date as the systems evolve. Participating in governance. We took part in L2 DAO governance, at times as one of the largest and most active delegates in the Optimism Collective, Arbitrum DAO, ZK Nation, Scroll DAO, and others, helping shape decisions about how these systems are developed and governed. Bringing people together. We organized conferences focused on the development of the L2 ecosystem, including Layer Two Amsterdam, L2Warsaw, and L2DAYS Istanbul, alongside smaller meetups and gatherings. Contributing to research and development. Last but not least, we were active in R&D, joining various working groups and, most notably, driving the research on native rollups. Over those years, we became a central reference point for Ethereum L2 development, keeping the space accountable and pushing it to live up to its “scaling Ethereum” claims. Ethereum has changed But Ethereum has changed significantly since then. Scaling is now being addressed directly at the L1 protocol level, and Layer 2s are finding product-market fit outside of scaling Ethereum, offering specialized onchain products that go beyond what a credibly neutral base layer can provide. Meanwhile, more and more solutions are being built on Ethereum across privacy, interop, DeFi, and beyond. Users are asking the same questions about them that they once asked about L2s: Which of Ethereum’s core properties do these solutions inherit? Which claims are real, and which are just marketing? Whom do they actually have to trust? We’ve been asking those questions too, gradually expanding what we cover: first ZK components through our ZK Catalog, then interop, privacy solutions, tokens, blob usage, and more to come. Why the new name We haven’t been focused solely on Layer 2s for quite some time, so it only makes sense for our name to reflect that. This doesn’t mean we’re leaving L2s behind. Our coverage isn’t going anywhere, and we’ll keep monitoring them as closely as ever. They’re just no longer our main focus. Our focus now is broader: making sure that what’s built on Ethereum actually delivers Ethereum’s guarantees to the people who use it. What’s next We’re excited about the future of Ethereum, and we want to bring the transparency and scrutiny we’re known for in the L2 space to the broader ecosystem, working alongside other Ethereum-focused organizations. L2s remain one of our core domains, together with Privacy and, coming soon, Liquid Staking. We’ll also continue our work on Interop, Tokens, ZK, Native Rollups and other important parts of the ecosystem, while closely following changes to the base layer. We’re also introducing the CROPS guide, a curated page of projects that satisfy the CROPS principles and set an example for the rest of the ecosystem. Going forward, our work will be guided by our Mandate, outlined below. We believe disintermediation is one of the most effective ways to protect individual freedom. Intermediaries concentrate power, which tempts them to abuse it and makes them targets for anyone who wants to use it against you. Custodians and issuers can steal or freeze your funds [1–6]. Payment processors and frontends can cut off your ability to transact [7–12]. Services that hold your personal information can leak it, sell it, or hand it over [13–18]. Even an honest intermediary is a single point of failure and a single point of pressure. Blockchains and cryptography are our strongest tools for reducing this dependence. Ethereum is built for distributed verification: people can run full nodes locally, on consumer hardware, with open source and independently developed clients and tooling. Its public specifications and open governance process allow anyone to scrutinize the protocol and shape its future. But that alone does not eliminate intermediaries. Anyone can build on Ethereum, including applications that recreate the old dependencies. As L2BEAT, we spent years exposing these dependencies across rollups, bridges, and data availability layers, and pushing projects to remove them. ETHBEAT brings the same scrutiny to the parts of Ethereum that benefit the most: where people depend on these guarantees, and where better options exist or are within reach. Our mission is to help people understand and reduce their dependence on intermediaries. We research how systems actually work and track how their guarantees change. We explain whom users must trust, what those parties can do, and whether users can still get out if everyone else walks away. We recognize applications that uphold censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security, so that people can find them and builders who preserve these properties gain users and support. We develop standards with researchers, builders, and users, both for assessing systems and for building them better. And because cypherpunks write code, we build open source tools that put these principles into practice. We don’t want to become another intermediary you have to trust. Our funding sources are public, and no one can pay for a most favourable assessment. We publish our methods, evidence, and reasoning so that anyone can check our work, challenge it, and build on it. We hold ourselves to the same scrutiny we apply to others. FTX customer funds stolen Celsius fraud and withdrawal freeze QuadrigaCX customer funds misappropriated Cyprus bank deposits frozen and converted into equity Canadian protest-related bank account freezes Paxos freezes gold-backed tokens on Ethereum PayPal blocks WikiLeaks donations PayPal freezes Proton Mail crowdfunding funds Payment processors restrict adult content on itch.io Infura mistakenly blocks Venezuelan users DeFi frontends block users over Tornado Cash exposure Ethereum MEV relays filter sanctioned transactions Yahoo account data used to identify and imprison a journalist Twitter employee supplies private user data to Saudi officials X-Mode sells sensitive location data Stolen Coinbase customer data used in targeted scams Kroll breach exposes crypto creditors’ data amid phishing attacks Celsius bankruptcy filings expose customer names and transactions