Ethereum is showing signs of becoming a trusted, stable, and sovereign-level "world ledger".
**Author:** imToken
**Cover:** Photo by Shubham Dhage on Unsplash
On June 20, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin re-commented on a tweet by ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin, stating that "Ethereum Layer 1 is the world ledger".
This is a rare statement by Vitalik regarding the recent macro narrative discussion of Ethereum.
It is well known that in the blockchain world, each public chain basically has a design positioning and often establishes its technical architecture and ecosystem style.
For example, Ethereum, from its inception, has had the ultimate vision of building a "world computer": an open platform that can run any smart contract and carry various Web3 application logics. Vitalik has also clearly pointed out that Ethereum is not just a payment network, but a general decentralized computing layer.
So now, from "world computer" to "world ledger", what narrative changes has it gone through?
**Ethereum: The Original Intention of the World Computer**
In fact, not just Ethereum, even Bitcoin, which initially proposed the vision of "Electronic Cash", has gradually shifted its payment positioning with the growth of its volume and market evolution, turning towards "digital gold" with value storage as its core.
Objectively speaking, this transformation is a pragmatic choice, as BTC, as the representative of crypto assets breaking through boundaries, has been substantially incorporated into mainstream financial institutions' balance sheets, gradually becoming a core asset in TradFi portfolios.
Looking back at Ethereum's development path, we find that while the main line has not undergone a drastic change in grand narrative, it has been in continuous dynamic evolution:
From 2016 onwards, through each market cycle, Ethereum has led the entire track as the leader of smart contract platforms, giving birth to numerous on-chain use cases, from ERC20 to DeFi, and then to Non-Fungible Tokens and chain games, each hot spot confirming the charm of "on-chain computing power".
It can be said that smart contracts have always been its core, which is why Vitalik has repeatedly emphasized that Ethereum is a decentralized application platform aimed at carrying various Web3 native logics, not just asset transfers. But at the same time, we also see the contradictions in reality.
Naturally, the most criticized issues were once high gas fees and low TPS, which limited the large-scale implementation of truly complex computational logic. It was against this background that Rollup technology gradually came to the fore from 2020, and after 5 years of development, Ethereum has gradually established a "L1+L2" layered structure.
Under this architecture, especially in the past two years, more and more signs indicate that Ethereum is showing signs of becoming a trusted, stable, and sovereign-level "world ledger".
**Narrative Reconstruction under L1+L2 Division of Labor**
If summarized in one sentence, "Ethereum mainnet is responsible for security and settlement, while L2 handles high-frequency interactions" would be most apt.
In other words, the Ethereum ecosystem has now formed a clear division of labor: the mainnet provides infrastructure guarantees for security and final settlement, while L2 (such as Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, etc.) carries most high-frequency transactions and user operations.
This not only improves scalability but also further strengthens ETH's value capture logic, naturally pushing the Ethereum mainnet towards a "global decentralized ledger" positioning. The more L2 networks there are, the more successful they are, and the more prosperous the ecosystem, the higher the value of the Ethereum mainnet as a unified grand ledger.
After all, all L2 networks rely on it as a "central bank" level settlement layer.
As Web3 researcher Haotian said, EIP-1559 is undoubtedly a key turning point in Ethereum's narrative. It not only introduced Base Fee and burning mechanisms but also more deeply reshaped Ethereum's value capture method, shifting from relying on gas income from numerous mainnet transactions to achieving continuous "taxation" through L2.
In other words, in the past, users were direct customers of the mainnet, but now they have become L2 agents operating independently, responsible for providing services to users, collecting fees, and ultimately "remitting" fees to obtain settlement rights from the mainnet, a mechanism design very similar to the historical "tax farming system":
- The mainnet becomes the final trusted ledger for transaction clearing and settlement, similar to a central bank;
- L2 is like a commercial bank, responsible for high-frequency services facing users;
- Each L2 transaction verified on the mainnet will burn ETH, paying for the ledger's security;
It can be said that Ethereum has not abandoned its "world computer" vision, but the L1+L2 division of labor and development path is guiding it to first become a "world ledger".
The Realistic Landing of a "World Ledger"
Another interesting observation is that each wave of ETH's value explosion actually stems from the mainnet's ledger role being "put to use".
Like the 2017 ERC20 wave was a clearing layer for Token issuance, the 2020 DeFi Summer was a settlement platform for smart contract combinations, and the recent wave might explode again due to US stock tokenization and RWA financial assets on-chain, Ethereum remains that trusted ledger.
Because for TradFi, computing power is certainly important, but what truly determines whether migration on-chain occurs is always the ledger's "trust, finality, and security" - the core landing point for compliant assets.
This is why platforms like Robinhood have chosen to launch US stock token trading services based on Arbitrum and other L2s. Behind this is not only recognition of Rollup architecture performance but more importantly, these transactions will ultimately return to the Ethereum mainnet for settlement.
This also indicates that the current L2 solutions' performance, security, and compliance capabilities are sufficient to handle traditional financial core asset trading needs. In a sense, this wave of "US stocks on-chain" actually strengthens Ethereum's positioning as a global financial clearing and settlement infrastructure, further verifying the feasibility and real-world demand for its "world ledger" role.
This is the realistic and pragmatic evolution path for Ethereum from "world computer" to "world ledger" - it no longer merely promises a future on-chain application landscape but is increasingly chosen by mainstream real-world assets as the settlement endpoint.
From this perspective, such trends not only confirm the value of Ethereum L1 but will also profoundly reconstruct the value capture logic of L2, promoting the entire Ethereum ecosystem to truly align between technological and financial infrastructure.
In a nutshell, the narratives that can truly drive this chain towards billions of users are not just about what Ethereum can do, but more about:
What the real world is willing to do with Ethereum.
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