Why Modular zkEVMs Will Eat Monolithic Blockchains

Ethereum L1 and its clones (Avalanche C-Chain, BSC) bundle execution, settlement, and data availability, creating a single point of failure. A single popular NFT mint or DeFi exploit can grind the entire network to a halt, spiking gas for everyone.

• Inefficient Resource Allocation: All apps compete for the same global block space.
• Scalability Ceiling: Throughput is capped by the slowest component (often consensus).
• Blast Radius: A bug in one app's execution can threaten the chain's security and liveness.

Modular zkEVMs like zkSync Era, Polygon zkEVM, and Scroll decouple execution from settlement. They process transactions off-chain and post validity proofs to a base layer (Ethereum), inheriting its security without its constraints.

• Unbundled Scaling: Each rollup is a dedicated execution lane, eliminating app-to-app congestion.
• Security Inheritance: Finality is secured by Ethereum's validators via ZK-SNARKs.
• Developer Familiarity: Full EVM equivalence means teams can deploy existing Solidity/Vyper code with minimal changes.

High-throughput zkEVMs require cheap, abundant data. Dedicated DA layers like Celestia, EigenDA, and Avail provide this commodity at scale, breaking the monolithic DA bottleneck.

• Cost Reduction: Separating DA from settlement reduces L2 transaction costs by ~90%.
• Interoperability Foundation: A shared DA layer enables secure and trust-minimized bridging between rollups via fraud or validity proofs.
• Sovereign Rollups: Projects can launch their own chain without bootstrapping a new validator set.

Monolithic chains are siloed. A modular stack with shared settlement (Ethereum) and DA (Celestia) creates a network of interconnected zkEVMs. Protocols like LayerZero and Hyperlane enable cross-rollup composability, turning fragmentation into a superpower.

• Unified Liquidity: Assets and state can move securely between specialized chains (e.g., a gaming zkEVM to a DeFi zkEVM).
• App-Chain Explosion: Teams spin up purpose-built chains optimized for their use case (high-speed gaming, private enterprise).
• Aggregated Security: The ecosystem's security grows with Ethereum, not each individual chain.

Monolithic validators must stake to secure all functions. In a modular world, capital is deployed efficiently: ETH secures settlement, TIA/secures DA, and minimal stake secures execution. This reduces the Total Cost of Security for the entire network.

• Lower Barriers to Entry: Launching a secure chain no longer requires a $10B+ token valuation.
• Optimized Yields: Capital providers can allocate stake to the layer offering the best risk-adjusted returns.
• Sustainable Economics: Fees are split across specialized providers, aligning incentives without rent-seeking.

General-purpose monolithic chains will become legacy infrastructure for niche use or high-value settlements. The dominant dApp experience will live on a constellation of modular zkEVMs, chosen for their specific performance and cost profiles. The Arbitrum Orbit, OP Stack, and Polygon CDK stacks are the foundries for this new internet of sovereign chains.

• Inevitable Specialization: You don't run a world-scale MMO on the same server as your bank.
• Regulatory Clarity: Application-specific chains can be designed for compliance jurisdictions.
• Innovation Velocity: Upgrades to one layer (e.g., new proof system) benefit all connected chains.

Polygon's strategy is to become the dominant zk-powered settlement layer for Ethereum, using validity proofs to batch thousands of L2/L3 transactions.\n- Key Benefit: Inherits Ethereum's security while enabling ~$0.01 transactions and 2-second finality.\n- Key Benefit: Its Type 2 zkEVM equivalence minimizes developer friction, allowing direct porting of Uniswap V3 and other major dApps.

Matter Labs focuses on maximizing execution throughput with a native account abstraction architecture and a custom LLVM-based compiler.\n- Key Benefit: Native AA enables gasless transactions and batch operations, a fundamental UX shift away from EOAs.\n- Key Benefit: The zkPorter vision separates data availability, aiming for 100k+ TPS by leveraging EigenDA or a custom DAC.

General-purpose chains like Solana or a monolithic EVM chain must optimize for a single resource (e.g., compute), creating bottlenecks elsewhere.\n- Consequence: Data availability costs become the primary bottleneck, leading to volatile, high fees during congestion.\n- Consequence: Upgrades are highly politicized and slow, as seen with Ethereum's long road to proto-danksharding, stifling innovation.

StarkWare's core thesis is that a superior proving system (Cairo VM) will dominate the settlement layer by being faster and cheaper for complex logic.\n- Key Benefit: Cairo VM is not EVM-equivalent but is more efficient for ZK proofs, enabling novel applications like zk-Rollups for Perpetuals.\n- Key Benefit: The Starknet Stack (Madara, Appchains) enables modular deployment, letting teams like dYdX build custom chains.

Modular zkEVMs decouple execution, settlement, consensus, and data availability, allowing each layer to innovate independently via projects like Celestia and EigenLayer.\n- Key Benefit: Sovereign rollups can fork and upgrade without permission, trading some shared security for maximal sovereignty.\n- Key Benefit: Shared sequencers (e.g., from Astria) and restaking via EigenLayer commoditize security, driving costs toward zero.

Scroll prioritizes bytecode-level EVM equivalence and open-source, community-driven development to ensure maximum compatibility and trust minimization.\n- Key Benefit: Seamless porting of any EVM tooling or contract with zero modifications, reducing integration risk for protocols like Aave.\n- Key Benefit: Its end-to-end prover and decentralized sequencer/ prover network aim for superior censorship resistance.

Modularity fragments liquidity, developer mindshare, and user experience across dozens of chains. Monoliths like Solana offer a single, unified state.\n- Liquidity Silos: DeFi composability breaks across rollups, requiring complex bridging.\n- Developer Friction: Must deploy and maintain contracts on multiple execution layers.\n- User Confusion: Managing assets and gas across 10+ rollups is a UX nightmare.

Today's rollup sequencers are highly centralized (e.g., OP Stack, Arbitrum). This creates a single point of failure and MEV capture.\n- Censorship Risk: A single entity can reorder or censor transactions.\n- MEV Extraction: Value leaks to the sequencer, not the base layer or users.\n- Solution Lag: Decentralized sequencer sets (like Espresso, Astria) are nascent and add latency.

zkEVMs rely on external DA layers (Celestia, EigenDA, Avail). If demand outstrips supply, DA costs could skyrocket, negating the low-fee promise.\n- Oligopoly Pricing: A few DA providers could exert pricing power.\n- Blob Fee Volatility: Ethereum's blob market is untested at scale.\n- Security/Trust Trade-off: Using a cheaper, less secure DA layer introduces new trust assumptions.

Fast, secure cross-rollup communication is unsolved. Monolithic chains have native composability. Bridges (LayerZero, Axelar, Wormhole) are expensive attack vectors.\n- Bridge Hacks: Over $2.8B lost in bridge exploits.\n- Latency: Moving assets between rollups takes minutes, breaking UX.\n- Complexity: Intents (Across, UniswapX) shift risk to solvers, creating new centralization.

Chains like Solana, Monad, and Sei are optimizing every component in-house. Tight integration allows faster iteration on consensus, execution, and state management.\n- Parallel Execution: Native support, not a bolted-on afterthought.\n- Synchronous Composability: All apps share instantaneous state.\n- Single-Stack Debugging: Easier to optimize and maintain performance.

Shared sequencers (e.g., Espresso, Astria) are proposed to solve fragmentation, but they become a new monolithic layer. If they fail or get congested, all connected rollups fail.\n- Single Point of Failure: Re-creates the very problem modularity aims to solve.\n- Cross-Chain MEV: Creates new, complex MEV opportunities across rollups.\n- Adoption Risk: Requires massive rollup coordination to be effective.