Key Takeaways

• Vitalik's tweet boosts ZKsync prices and energizes the Layer2 market.
• ZKsync's Atlas upgrade enhances liquidity and integration with Ethereum.
• Layer2 transaction growth surpasses Ethereum mainnet transactions.
• Increase in Layer2 transaction fees but still far below peak levels.
• Upcoming Ethereum's Fusaka update could significantly boost Layer2 growth.

Introduction

Last weekend, a tweet from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin triggered a significant surge in the price of ZKsync, a long-standing Layer2 (L2) scaling solution. This event sparked renewed interest in the entire Layer2 ecosystem. Concurrently, with leading projects continuing to exert effort, the Ethereum L2 ecosystem has witnessed a sustained increase in trading activity.

Vitalik's Endorsement of ZKsync: Activity Surge but Still at Low Levels

Amidst a widespread downturn in the cryptocurrency market, Vitalik's tweet fueled a rise in the entire Layer2 ecosystem, led by ZKsync, making it among the few bright spots in the market. On November 1, Alex, the co-founder of ZKsync, published an article on the social media platform titled "Ethereum is now the main capital hub of ZKsync." Vitalik then retweeted the article, commenting that ZKsync had accomplished much valuable work that was undervalued in the Ethereum ecosystem and expressed his anticipation for upcoming new features. As a result, Coingecko data showed that the price of ZKsync's token, ZK, surged by as much as 150.34%, hitting a nearly half-year high. Concurrently, Layer2 sector tokens, including MINA, SCR, and STRK, also experienced substantial gains. The surge in ZKsync is not solely attributable to Vitalik's attention. He had previously interacted with ZKsync on multiple occasions. The more crucial driving factor is the Atlas upgrade. According to Alex, ZKsync's Atlas upgrade makes Ethereum its capital hub, enabling ZKsync-based chains to directly invoke Ethereum liquidity without relying on independent liquidity pools, thereby completely reshaping the L1 and L2 funding structure. This upgrade has not only achieved instant liquidity interoperability between L1 and L2 but also brought core performance improvements such as 15,000+ TPS, 1-second ZK finality, and near-zero transaction fees, enabling Ethereum to become an institutional-grade instant settlement center. From a practical perspective, the most significant part of the Atlas upgrade is not in the TPS breakthrough of 15,000 but in the core value of solving the problem of various L2 liquidity islands. "ZK Gateway" middleware components facilitate communication between ZK chains, and the direct result is that L2 to L2 transactions can be completed in approximately one second. If this technology can be developed to achieve the expected goals, it is expected to combine Ethereum's L2s into a single whole in the true sense. This is extremely important for the Ethereum ecosystem. In addition, the performance improvement allows institutions to see more possibilities in business directions such as RWA. Previously, ZKsync had been promoting institutional business, even ranking third among RWA public chains. Recently, ZKsync also launched an institutional private blockchain infrastructure, Prividium, aimed at providing enterprise-grade privacy protection, built-in compliance, and seamless connectivity with Ethereum. Officials revealed that since its launch, more than 30 traditional institutions, including Citibank, Deutsche Bank, and Mastercard, have joined. Furthermore, the core technology of zero-knowledge proof (ZK) behind ZKsync is a key innovation in the field of Ethereum scaling, combining high scalability and strong privacy. It has been widely recognized in the industry as a production-ready technological cornerstone. The Cryptocurrency 2025 report recently released by a16z crypto pointed out that the prosperity of applications is inseparable from the maturity of the infrastructure. Over the past five years, the total transaction throughput of blockchains has grown by 100 times, and the proliferation of Ethereum L2 has reduced the average transaction cost to below one cent, making the blockchain space connected to Ethereum both cheap and abundant. Among many technologies, zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) are rapidly transitioning from academic research to critical infrastructure, having been integrated into Rollups, compliance tools, and mainstream network services. Under favorable stimulus, ZKsync's active addresses have also seen a rare rebound, rising by 26% in the past 30 days. As of October 27, there were only 10,400 daily active addresses, still at a very low level. This data ranks 60th in all union group rankings. It also ranks lower in Ethereum L2. From the perspective of TVL performance, ZKsync's mainnet data is still in a slump, with only $44.55 million, and according to data from its official website, there are currently 18 chains in the ZKsync elastic network, and the total TVL of these chains reaches $3.3 billion. From this perspective, the essence of ZKsync now is more like a TO B technology service provider, and the ecological performance itself is still lackluster. In summary, it can be said that as the green leaf of the Ethereum L2 ecosystem, ZKsync performs quite well, while its own red flower part has not yet been opened.

Leading Projects Drive Strong Rebound in L2 Trading, but Overall Valuations Still Shrink by Nearly 90%

According to a recent tweet disclosure by Routescan, the top five blockchain ecosystems in terms of trading activity in October all achieved positive growth. This includes multiple L2s, such as Optimism Superchain reaching 486 million TXs and Boba reaching 1.9 million TXs, indicating that the activity of the L2 ecosystem is recovering. From the perspective of the overall trend, the Layer2 ecosystem is showing signs of recovery driven by leading projects, with many core indicators rebounding, and some data even recording new historical highs. According to the latest Token Terminal data, the monthly trading volume of Ethereum Layer2 networks continues to grow strongly, with more than 530 million transactions completed in total in October of this year, setting a new high, about 11 times the volume of the mainnet (48 million transactions) during the same period. Among the various L2 networks, Base contributes an absolute advantage of 64.2% of the trading volume (approximately 340 million transactions), becoming the most active chain in the ecosystem. The surge in transactions may be driven by incentives from coin issuance plans. Second, Arbitrum One and OP Mainnet, accounting for approximately 15% and 12% of transactions, respectively. From the perspective of monthly active user data, the L2 network showed a downward trend and increased differentiation in October. The latest Token Terminal data shows that L2 monthly active users reached 16.1 million, a decrease of 61.4% from the historical high of 41.7 million in June of this year, but still far exceeding the 8.3 million of the Ethereum mainnet. Among them, Base maintains an absolute lead, accounting for 22.9%, and achieves relatively stable performance; zkSync Era, Starknet, and Blast and other chains also have significant user losses compared to historical highs. The fees of the L2 network have also seen a significant rebound recently. From the perspective of daily fee revenue, since reaching an all-time high of more than US$560 million in May 2024, the entire L2 sector has shown a cliff-like downward trend. Although the Dencun upgrade has significantly reduced data costs and more extended L2 projects have been launched, fee revenue has not rebounded as a result, but has accelerated its contraction due to multiple factors such as the decline in on-chain activity, the decline in the Gas narrative, and the ecological performance that is less than expected. By October 2025, the monthly fees for the entire L2 sector were close to US$160 million, only 28.1% of the peak, but setting a new high since February of this year. Among them, Base, Arbitrum One, and OP Mainnet account for approximately 98.3% of the total fees. From the perspective of fully diluted valuation (FDV), since reaching an all-time high of more than US$57.37 billion in July of last year, the entire L2 sector has shown a continuous downward trend. Although more L2 projects have issued tokens during the period, the market value has not rebounded as a result, but has accelerated its evaporation due to multiple factors such as the unlocking wave, weak narrative, and the ecological performance that is less than expected. By October 2025, the FDV of the entire L2 sector was only approximately US$7.23 billion, only 12.6% of the peak, which is equivalent to the evaporation of nearly 90% of the valuation bubble in just 15 months. Among them, Arbitrum, OP Mainnet, zkSync Era, and Starknet account for approximately 85% of the total FDV. It is worth mentioning that Ethereum developers have officially set the time for the Fusaka upgrade as December 3, which will reduce L2 operating costs and increase throughput, further catalyzing the explosive growth and mainstream adoption of the L2 ecosystem. Overall, the Layer2 ecosystem is ushering in a stage of recovery, and technological upgrades and infrastructure improvements are consolidating the long-term value of L2. However, whether the ecosystem can develop steadily will depend on the actual capabilities of core projects, the realized situation of the ecosystem, and the optimization of the market's financial structure.