Ethereum’s next chapter has a name — the Integrated Era.

It's a flywheel vision: growth increases visibility, attracting builders and users who spur innovation, repeating the cycle.

Currently, though, coordination often fails. Ethereum's new roadmap aims to fix this by uniting infrastructure, developers, and apps to scale L1, align L2s, and maintain leadership.

Here’s what that future looks like. 👇

~~ Op-Ed by @mteamisloading~~

The problem Ethereum faces is simple — every part of the flywheel is broken.

|Note: This covers Ethereum’s technical roadmap, not the social one. Both matter.

First, Accept the Problem

New apps, developers, and users are on L2s. Innovation happens on L2s. Economic activity is shifting to L2s.

That wouldn’t be a problem if L2s fed back into Ethereum’s flywheel. But, too often, they don’t.

The break stems from Ethereum’s 2020-era belief that rollups were the only viable path to scale — and a drastic overestimation of how much they’d feed back into the broader ecosystem.

Rollups were pitched as simpler than sharding, preserving L1 security, and offering better composability.

But they’re not just a scaling solution. They’re also an incentives architecture. The flawed logic:

1. We need to scale Ethereum.
2. Some form of sharding is necessary to scale a blockchain with the properties we want.
3. In protocol execution, sharding is too complex and has other issues.
4. Thus, rollups are the only way to scale Ethereum.

The first big mistake was assuming sharding was necessary. It’s now clear it wasn’t. Solana and Monad both scale without it. And Ethereum’s L1 still has room to grow.

While I am not convinced one chain will ever be enough for everything, I think we pushed to that endgame before pursuing the opportunities for L1 scaling we had.

Point #4 in this line of reasoning also falls short. We failed to correctly evaluate the potential downsides/cons of a rollup-centric roadmap on the network effect flywheel of the L1.

The Ideal Flywheel

L2s should accelerate, not siphon, Ethereum’s network effects:

→ Provide flexible scale
→ Push specialization and experimentation
→ Onboard new users/devs
→ Grow Ethereum’s total and L1-specific REV
→ Remain highly composable with Ethereum

This sort of interaction has the desired effect for Ethereum but also for L2s — a rising tide lifts all boats.

The problem that Ethereum has faced is simple — we have broken every part of this flywheel.

A Firm Foundation

Rebooting the flywheel starts with a strong L1 — worth composing with, holding, and building around.

How? Scale the L1.

Why?

1. It strengthens Ethereum’s network effects
2. Raises the bar for L2s
3. Helps L2s thrive

L1 scaling means higher TPS, more gas per second, faster slot times. Ethereum must become the best network not just for settlement, but for execution.

That’s the foundation L2s need.

Bring Rollups Home

As L1 scales, we must also make rollups work better for the flywheel.

We owe rollups support — Ethereum prioritized them, and they’ve grown on their own. But not all rollups need to exist, and some should die.

I propose a simple rollup design:

→ The rollup stores its data on Ethereum.
→ Runs its smart contracts directly on Ethereum — this makes it a native rollup.
→ Relies on Ethereum to order transactions — this makes it a based rollup.
→ Uses $ETH to pay for gas.

They'd be “ultrasound rollups” — not possible today as they require a new execution opcode and better sequencing infra. But they are possible with L1 scaling.

If we get there, we unlock rollups that combine native composability with customizability. These rollups scale hard and remain deeply Ethereum-aligned. They’re not a step back. They’re the way forward.

Ultrasound rollups are extensions of Ethereum’s network effects. Solana had the right idea with “network extensions” — this is Ethereum’s version.

We can transition existing rollups. New ones should prioritize this. With it, synchronous composability and infinite expressivity become possible.

Many Choices → Obvious Choice

Ethereum is building premium DA, exporting sequencing, and soon will offer native execution. That’s the full rollup package.

Yes, chains will still be modular. But Ethereum’s bundled services will be so polished that no competitor will matter.

Fee accrual becomes simple: provide the best services — the best DA, security, settlement, and sequencing.

Narrative falls into place too. "Ethereum is the best" ➡️ Ethereum is the best.

Scale the L1.

Bring the rollups home.

Integrate everything.

And ship it as fast as possible. (I know I'll try.)

/abridged for Twitter