General-Purpose Rollup vs. App-Specific Rollup for AVS

General-Purpose Rollups (e.g., Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync) excel at providing a robust, shared ecosystem because they offer battle-tested security, deep liquidity, and a mature developer toolchain. For example, Arbitrum One consistently processes over 30 TPS with a TVL exceeding $18B, providing immediate access to a vast user and capital base. This makes them ideal for AVSs that require interoperability with major DeFi protocols like Uniswap and Aave, or those that want to avoid the overhead of managing their own validator set.

App-Specific Rollups (e.g., dYdX v4 on Cosmos, Lyra on Optimism Stack) take a different approach by customizing the entire stack for a single application. This results in superior performance and sovereignty—dYdX v4 achieves 2,000 TPS with sub-second finality—but trades off ecosystem composability and requires your team to manage chain-level operations like sequencers and data availability. The trade-off is clear: maximal throughput and control versus shared network effects.

The key trade-off: If your priority is time-to-market, capital efficiency, and composability within a dominant L2 ecosystem, choose a General-Purpose Rollup. If you prioritize unmatched performance, custom fee models, and protocol-level sovereignty, an App-Specific Rollup is the definitive choice. Your decision hinges on whether you need to plug into an existing city or build your own optimized town.

General-Purpose Rollups (e.g., Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync) excel at providing a secure, battle-tested, and interoperable environment for a broad range of applications. Their primary strength is shared security and liquidity from the underlying L1, resulting in massive network effects. For example, Arbitrum One consistently processes over 10 TPS with a TVL exceeding $15B, offering developers instant access to a mature ecosystem of wallets, oracles (Chainlink), and DeFi primitives (Uniswap V3, GMX). This reduces initial development friction significantly.

App-Specific Rollups (e.g., dYdX v4, Immutable zkEVM) take a different approach by optimizing the entire stack for a single, high-performance use case. This results in a trade-off: you sacrifice general composability for maximal efficiency. By tailoring the virtual machine, data availability layer, and sequencer logic, these chains can achieve sub-second finality and near-zero fees for their core operations. dYdX's order book, for instance, would be prohibitively expensive and slow on a general-purpose chain, but thrives on its custom rollup.

The key trade-off is sovereignty versus synergy. If your priority is launching quickly, leveraging existing liquidity, and enabling complex cross-protocol interactions, choose a General-Purpose Rollup. Your AVS becomes a powerful dApp within a bustling city. If you prioritize ultimate performance, predictable economics, and full control over your chain's roadmap and upgrade cadence, choose an App-Specific Rollup. Your AVS is a specialized, high-speed factory built for one job. For most teams, starting on a general-purpose rollup to validate product-market fit before "graduating" to a sovereign chain is the most pragmatic path.