After the Ethereum Fusaka upgrade, the adoption of EIP-7918 (the minimum reserve price for blob fees, approximately 1/16 of the base execution fee) introduced a guaranteed price mechanism, leading many to believe it would solve the ETH value capture problem.
However, in reality, there's still a long way to go. Currently, L2 still captures the majority of the profits, for example, the base layer receives over 70%, paying only a small amount of blob fees to Ethereum L1.
To truly solve this problem, and also address the L2 liquidity fragmentation issue, there are solutions. One such solution is Based Rollup, which allows L2 to directly inherit the decentralization, economic security, and activity already present in Ethereum L1, instead of creating a centralized sequencer or small validator set. Adding Native Rollup (execution layer integration) would further enhance this.
Adopting Based Rollup can alleviate two major current problems in the Ethereum ecosystem: liquidity fragmentation and ETH value capture. Currently, most L2 systems use centralized sequencers. This leads to situations where the sequencer can refuse to include transactions; outages cause L2 to stall (this has happened multiple times in history); MEV and profits are monopolized by the L2 team, and ETH cannot capture reasonable value.
Based Rollups can drive L2 towards decentralization. Traditional L2 systems face significant challenges in achieving decentralization, such as developing their own fraud/validity proofs and decentralized sequencer systems. Based Rollups allow L1 proposers to handle transaction ordering, with proofs supported by DA (Data Access) and fraud/validity proofs. Simultaneously, all transactions in Based Rollups are ordered within the same L1 block, achieving cross-L2 interoperability and mitigating liquidity fragmentation. Ethereum L1's ETH captures reasonable revenue, and most of the L2 sequencer profits become revenue for L1 block builders, converted into rewards for ETH stakers. The prerequisite here is that L2 systems are willing to adopt Based Rollups; currently, most L2 systems seem unwilling to relinquish their most lucrative profit margins.
The L2 application chain Reya currently uses ZK proofs to ensure finality and L1 validator/delegation ordering, and buys back ETH with 20% of protocol/transaction fees. It offers better ecosystem feedback for Ethereum L1 than Lighter. If Reya succeeds, more and more L2 application chains will adopt a Rollup-based architecture, which will benefit ETH value capture.