Vitalik Notes (Alpha) The Ethereum layer 2 ecosystem has been expanding rapidly over the last year. The EVM rollup ecosystem, traditionally featuring Arbitrum, Optimism and Scroll, and more recently Kakarot and Taiko, has been progressing quickly, making great strides on improving their security; the L2beat page does a good job of summarizing the state of each project. Additionally, we have seen teams building sidechains also starting to build rollups (Polygon), layer 1 projects seeking to move toward being validiums (Celo), and totally new efforts (Linea, Zeth...). Finally, there is the not-just-EVM ecosystem: "almost-EVMs" like Zksync, extensions like Arbitrum Stylus, and broader efforts like the Starknet ecosystem, Fuel and others.
L2s with no token: 1- Scroll 2- Kakarot 3- Taiko 4- Zkevm 5- Linea 6- Zeth (Riskzero) 7- Zksync 8- StarkNet 9- Fuel // the Intmax approach, which involves putting a few bytes on chain rollup-style together with a Plasma-like operator that passes around information between individual users.
Plasma lets us completely sidestep the data availability question, greatly reducing transaction fees. Plasma can be a significant security upgrade for chains that would otherwise be validiums. The fact that ZK-EVMs are finally coming to fruition this year makes it an excellent opportunity to re-explore this design space, and come up with even more effective constructions to simplify the developer experience and protect users' funds.