On the surface, Ethereum’s recent upgrade seems to have simply made gas fees cheaper, but the real change runs much deeper.

Put simply, Ethereum’s positioning has shifted. It no longer aims to cram every transaction onto the mainnet for processing. Instead, it’s transforming into a “super settlement hub.” Those Layer 2 networks—like Arbitrum and Optimism—are essentially high-speed workstations operating on the periphery. They handle massive volumes of transactions off-chain first, then ultimately return to the Ethereum mainnet for final security confirmation.

There’s a key design here: every time a Layer 2 submits data to the mainnet, it has to pay a fixed settlement fee. And that money doesn’t go into the pocket of some foundation—it’s directly burned, destroying the corresponding amount of ETH. This creates an interesting mechanism: as long as the Layer 2 ecosystem keeps running, ETH will continue to be burned, regardless of whether the market is hot or cold.

In other words, the faster Layer 2s run and the more prosperous the ecosystem becomes, the greater the deflationary pressure on ETH. This isn’t just some hype-driven narrative; it’s an economic model coded into the protocol.

So the situation now is: Ethereum is evolving from a crowded public chain into the foundational settlement infrastructure for the entire crypto world. All the prosperity built on top of it will ultimately feed back into ETH’s value accumulation in this way.

Do you think, after this upgrade, ETH could potentially see a price movement independent of the broader market?