Layer 3s Found Their Niche

L3s initially seemed like layering for the sake of layering. The skepticism was warranted. But the actual deployments tell a different story. Application-specific L3s solve real problems.

Gaming needs its own execution environment. High throughput for game state updates. Custom gas tokens that players understand. Isolation from DeFi congestion. An L3 dedicated to one game makes sense.

Social applications are similar. Millions of micro-interactions that would be expensive anywhere else. Custom data availability for social graphs. The economics only work at L3.

The pattern I see is L3s for verticals where the application can fill the blockspace. If you generate enough activity to justify dedicated infrastructure, go L3. If not, stay on shared L2s.

Settlement back to L2 gives security inheritance. Your L3 game settles to Arbitrum which settles to Ethereum. The security chain is intact even with application-specific execution.

Deployment is getting trivial too. Rollup-as-a-service providers spin up L3s in minutes. No deep blockchain expertise needed. Just configure and deploy. The barrier dropped significantly.