Our “Pluralistic Future of L2s” writing contest has ended.

The contest received a lot of attention, and we even got a prompt from Vitalik.

Writers explored L2s from different angles.

How do L2s relate to urbanism, the Internet, and the United States?
What role does culture play, and is Ethereum experiencing an existential crisis?
How do shared sequencing, based rollups, and different trust guarantees work?

In the end, we received 28 submissions from a diverse group of authors, including the co-inventor of the ERC20 standard, co-founder of Celo, and Ethereum Foundation researcher. Even Bankless, who didn’t technically participate in the contest, added their two cents.

And the writers' work got a lot of attention. We calculated with t2 that people spent over 20 hours reading the submissions, and some contest essays have been read by Vitalik, Stani Kulechov, and Alex Glukhovsky. 

We also received 139 votes that determined the winners of the contest.

Here are the TOP10 submissions

Below, you can find the ten most upvoted submissions. We don't start from the 10th place because we had a few posts receiving the same amount of upvotes.

8th place: "Culture is the Strategy"
by aimhigher.eth (4 upvotes)

Six shows that since most activity has shifted to L2s, each major L2 created its unique culture to attract developers and users. These cultural distinctions help L2s differentiate themselves, as technical differences are often minimal, making culture and network effects essential for growth in an increasingly commoditized L2 space.

8th place: "Not All L2s Prioritize Ethereum's Security Equally!"
by ishitarastogi.lens (4 upvotes)

Ishita shows how L2s can approach the tradeoff between costs and maintaining robust security guarantees and highlights that not all L2s should optimize for the same level of security, which means that they can be more scalable.

7th place: "The Rollup Trap: How Incentives Are Shaping the Future of Ethereum"
by jaack.eth (5 upvotes)

Jaack shows how many new L2 chains emerge with incentives and airdrops, which often leads to inefficiency and speculation, rather than driving real adoption and innovative use cases for blockchain technology. He calls for building a shared standard for all rollups, instead of incentivizing competition across sub L2 ecosystems (like Superchain, AggLayer, zkSync Elastic Chains and so on).

6th place: "L2s are just the Internet Re-treading its Steps"
by kairon.eth (7 upvotes)

Kairon shows how cultures and technologies come from common origins, with each new iteration adapting to specific needs, like conservatism and liberalism or modern programming languages. Similarly, L2s build on foundational principles, offering specialized services that can be - and already are - used by the crypto builders.

5th place: "Layer 2 Interoperability through Shared Validity Sequencing"
by ccarella.eth (9 upvotes)

Chris Carella shows how Shared Validity Sequencing (SVS) could unify transaction history across chains. He explains how it works and how it's different from traditional bridging.

5th place: "Straight Outta Ethereum: the Pluralistic Future of L2s"
by mehdib.eth (9 upvotes)

Mehdib explores the growing complexity of L2s, highlighting the fragmentation caused by competing scalability models. He introduces the concept of Taiko's Based and Booster Rollups, which propose collaboration between L2s by leveraging L1 validators to improve composability and eliminate monopolistic competition.

[$] 4th place: "Is Ethereum experiencing an existential crisis?"
by ahouraz.eth (13 upvotes)

Ahouraz explores the cultural challenges within the Ethereum community and advocates for a L2-centric vision that incorporates ideas from Hans Widmer's bolo’bolo and Balaji Srinivasan's The Network State. The essay calls for a more intentional, community-driven approach to L2 development to address Ethereum’s existential questions and emphasizes the need for collaboration, hospitality, and inclusivity to revitalize Etherian culture.

[$] 3rd place: "L2s' Competition& Culture: How Asymmetric Info Shapes the Landscape"
by 183aaros.eth (14 upvotes)

Aaros examines the dynamics between L2s through the lens of asymmetric information, identifying challenges such as moral hazards, adverse selection, and information silos. He suggests solutions like fostering cross-L2 governance collaboration, adopting shared standards, and implementing fact-check systems, while advocating for cultural campaigns to strengthen cooperation and transparency in the Ethereum ecosystem.

[$] 2nd place: "Celo as a Cultural Extension of Ethereum"
by mareko.eth (17 upvotes)

Marek shares Celo's story and explains what angle it will bring to Ethereum L2s. He talks about Celo's beginnings, betting on mobile, partnership with Opera browser, stablecoins, and reaching millions of people in developing countries.

[$] 1st place: "Zoning L2s: Scaling your Blockchain with Lessons from Urbanism"
by Simon de la Rouviere (19 upvotes)

Simon compares blockchains to cities, where L1 acts like a dense, diverse city center, and L2s functions like surrounding neighborhoods with specific uses. The essay explores two types of zoning—Euclidean and nuisance-based—as metaphors for L2 scaling, highlighting trade-offs between generality, specificity, and how they affect long-term cooperation between L1 and L2.

Final results

So the results are as follows:

1st place: simon (600 USDC)

2nd place: mareko.eth (300 USDC)

3rd place: 183aaros.eth (180 USDC)

4th place: ahouraz.eth (120 USDC)

These were the top 10 posts, but we received many more submissions. You can read all of them in the Kiwi app and Kiwi t2 territory.

Thanks to all the participants for sharing your thoughts! We also want to thank t2 & Lens for co-organizing the event and thank our partners - Developer DAO, LearnWeb3 & EpicWeb3 for promoting the event inside their communities.

PS: If you won, please DM @macbudkowski on Telegram to learn about the next steps.

PS2: And if you would like to learn more about Kiwi, you can dig in here.