Ethereum Foundation Differentiates Roles of L1 and L2s in Latest Utility Definition

Key Insights:

• Ethereum Foundation (EF) noted that L1 remains the global settlement and DeFi hub, while L2s would focus on strategies that are complementary to L1 and differentiate their platforms.
• EF announces public launch of the official resource website for everything Post-Quantum.
• AllCoreDevs will decide on whether to include EIP-8141 as a major feature in the Hegota network upgrade this week.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has shared a new classification that differentiates the roles of the layer-1 (L1) and layer-2 (L2) ecosystems. The EF clarifies the roles of each layer and how developers are leveraging their strengths to build platforms for users.

The classification comes amid ongoing post-quantum work and preparations among developers to decide on EIP-8141.

Ethereum Foundation Unveils New L1 and L2 Classification

The EF recently published a blog article, highlighting a path to building mutually reinforcing relationships between Ethereum L1 and L2. The article, written by EF Platform team members Josh Rudolf, Julian Ma, and Josh Stark, updates the L1 vs. L2 goals. This article talked about how the ecosystem has matured and clarified a mutually reinforcing model.

According to the new model, Layer-1, the Ethereum mainnet, remains the global settlement and decentralized finance (DeFi) hub. It serves as the permissionless, maximally resilient heart of the onchain economy with the deepest liquidity, shared state, and settlement.

The EF emphasizes that L1 will continue to scale by orders of magnitude while preserving core properties, privacy, security, and decentralization. Simply put, the L1 ecosystem would not try to be everything to everyone.

The Foundation also noted that L2s have shifted their missions. In the past, Ethereum Layer-2 primarily focused on pure scaling, with differentiation as secondary. Now, the biggest lever in the ecosystem is differentiation.

L2s are offering customized features, services, specialized apps, privacy enhancements, ultra-low latency, and compliance tools. As such, scaling is now secondary as L2s grow their own onchain economies while extending Ethereum’s security and liquidity to more users. It creates a full-spectrum ecosystem where L2s compete and cooperate.

Ethereum Foundation Research Coordinator Shares Update on Ongoing Post-Quantum Work

In a parallel update, Will Corcoran, Ethereum Foundation research coordinator, gave a talk at the Institutional Ethereum Forum in New York City. His presentation covered the Ethereum overall post-quantum security strategy.

Corcoran explained why every proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain faces the same core technical challenge and what the EF is doing about it. He also announced the public launch of the official resource website for everything the EF’s Post-Quantum has been working on.

The EF Post-Quantum and Crypto teams emphasized that Ethereum is designed to serve as a resilient, self-sovereign infrastructure for centuries. However, the release of Quantum computers now threatens secure ownership, authentication, and consensus across all digital systems.

A sufficiently advanced quantum attacker could forge signatures, steal funds from exposed keys, or potentially disrupt consensus by impersonating validators.

Notably, the EF has been doing R&D to future-proof the network well before quantum computers become a real threat. In January 2026, the EF officially made post-quantum security a top strategic priority and formed a dedicated PQ team.

Now, the Ethereum Foundation is accelerating engineering work with weekly devnets, open-source prototypes, and research prizes. The goal is to maintain consensus efficiency and decentralization even after switching to quantum-safe cryptography.

EIP-8141 Considerations Among Developers

Meanwhile, beyond the Ethereum Foundation, AllCoreDevs, the group of Ethereum client teams, plans to make a final decision this Thursday, March 26, 2026. The decision is centered on whether to include EIP-8141 as a major feature in the Hegota network upgrade.

Hegota is the next major Ethereum hard fork after Glamsterdam, currently targeted for the second half of 2026. It already has a censorship-resistant mechanism built into the consensus layer. Adding EIP-8141 would make it the primary execution-layer headliner.

This update directly ties into the post-quantum push discussed earlier. The Consensus Layer (CL) is moving toward Lean Ethereum with quantum-resistant hash-based signatures.

But if the Execution Layer (EL) still forces ECDSA for user transactions, the migration is incomplete. A quantum attacker could still forge user signatures and steal funds even if the chain’s consensus is PQ-secure.

EIP-8141 provides the native migration path on the EL. It removes the single point of failure and complements leanCL work.