The Future of dApps on a Stateless L2

Today's dApps are siloed by the gas cost of reading each other's state. A simple yield aggregator can trigger hundreds of storage reads, making complex DeFi strategies economically unviable.

• Eliminates the gas overhead of cross-contract state proofs.
• Enables atomic, multi-protocol operations at the cost of a single transaction.
• Unlocks DeFi lego that is currently impossible on EVM L1s.

Stateless L2s like Fuel and Movement enable a native intent-centric flow. Users submit signed declarations (intents), and a decentralized solver network finds optimal execution paths off-chain.

• UniswapX-style UX becomes the default, not a bolt-on.
• Solvers compete on execution quality, driving down costs via MEV recapture.
• Native support for conditional orders and gasless transactions.

The L2 sequencer only validates state transitions, not the full state. Clients (wallets, indexers) become first-class citizens, holding cryptographic proofs.

• Bridges like LayerZero and Across verify succinct proofs, not full state, enabling sub-second finality.
• Enables trust-minimized light clients on mobile devices.
• Foundation for modular, specialized execution layers that share security.

EVM state bloat makes real-time, complex game logic economically unviable. Every move costs gas and competes for block space.\n- Stateless Solution: Game state is verified off-chain via validity proofs; only fraud proofs or state transitions are posted.\n- Result: Enables massively multiplayer worlds with sub-second latency and micro-transactions.

Atomic composability across protocols requires massive, risky state exposure. Re-entrancy and MEV are systemic risks.\n- Stateless Solution: Intent-based architectures (like UniswapX or CowSwap) with off-chain solvers. Users submit signed intents; solvers find optimal execution paths.\n- Result: Gasless user experience, MEV protection, and cross-chain atomicity without shared state.

ZK-proof generation for private transactions (e.g., zkSNARKs) is computationally heavy and requires significant on-chain state for verification.\n- Stateless Solution: Off-chain proof generation with on-chain verification of a single, constant-sized proof. No need to store private state.\n- Result: Full transaction privacy with mainnet-level throughput and fixed verification cost, enabling private DeFi and voting.

Bridging assets across chains (e.g., LayerZero, Axelar) relies on expensive, slow, and insecure state synchronization of remote chains.\n- Stateless Solution: Light clients that verify block headers with validity proofs. No need to mirror entire foreign chain state.\n- Result: Trust-minimized bridges with ~2-second finality, 90% lower cost, and resilience against chain reorganizations.

Storing social graphs, attestations (like Ethereum Attestation Service), and reputation on-chain is a data monster.\n- Stateless Solution: Off-chain data availability (e.g., Celestia, EigenDA) with on-chain cryptographic commitments. State is referenced, not stored.\n- Result: Permissionless social graphs, portable identity, and context-rich transactions without L1 bloat.

Even optimistic rollups have 7-day withdrawal delays, locking capital. ZK-rollups have faster finality but prover costs limit frequency.\n- Stateless Solution: Stateless ZK-rollups with recursive proofs. Batch thousands of trades into a single proof, verified instantly on L1.\n- Result: Crypto-native HFT with sub-second L1 finality, institutional-grade liquidity, and composable margin systems.

Traditional L2s replicate Ethereum's state growth problem. Storing and syncing global state for every node creates ~100 GB+ of overhead and is the primary bottleneck for throughput.

• Key Benefit 1: Stateless clients only need the state they interact with, enabling ~10,000+ TPS theoretical ceilings.
• Key Benefit 2: Eliminates the need for centralized sequencers to manage state, moving towards a truly decentralized rollup stack.

Move execution and state validation off-chain to the user's client (via zk or validity proofs). The L2 network only verifies proofs of correct state transitions.

• Key Benefit 1: Users pay for their own compute. Enables gasless transactions for end-users, with costs abstracted or paid in stablecoins.
• Key Benefit 2: Unlocks native account abstraction and complex intent-based architectures (like UniswapX) without L1 gas constraints.

Statelessness makes L2s a coordination layer, not a execution monolith. Design dApps as intent solvers that batch and prove user actions.

• Key Benefit 1: Enables cross-chain intent settlement across ecosystems like Ethereum, Solana, and Cosmos via shared proving backends.
• Key Benefit 2: Drives composability to the solver layer, creating markets for MEV capture and redistribution back to users.

Security shifts from relying on a live, synced node to the ability to cryptographically verify any state claim. This changes slashing and fraud proof design.

• Key Benefit 1: Enables light client verification on mobile devices, expanding user reach beyond power users.
• Key Benefit 2: Reduces protocol-level trust assumptions to the cryptographic security of the proof system (e.g., STARKs, SNARKs).

Two leading implementations demonstrate the framework. Kakarot is a zkEVM in Cairo, making Ethereum stateless. Madara is a Starknet sequencer using SHARP for proving.

• Key Benefit 1: EVM compatibility via Kakarot allows immediate porting of existing dApps and tooling.
• Key Benefit 2: Cairo VM via Madara offers superior proving efficiency and native account abstraction primitives.

Economic model inverts. The network charges for proof verification (~$0.01), not execution. dApps must design sustainable fee abstraction or solver economics.

• Key Benefit 1: Predictable, ultra-low verification costs decoupled from compute complexity.
• Key Benefit 2: Opens new business models where dApps subsidize verification to acquire users, competing on experience, not just gas fees.