Optimism Superchain fee splits and Arbitrum execution trends

Optimism chains in the Superchain commit the greater of 2.5% of chain revenue or 15% of onchain profit to the Optimism Collective. This profit equals fee revenue minus L1 gas fees. On September 24, 2026, Optimism implemented Upgrade 20. This change moves fault proofs from Output Root Dispute Games to "Super Root Dispute Games" using timestamps. The transition to Super Root games uses timestamps as a common time reference, which is the foundation for a multi-chain dispute system once the Superchain reaches production interoperability. This upgrade also bundles changes to the contracts manager and SystemConfig to safeguard upgrade sequencing and clean up legacy configuration functions. The Superchain revenue model relies on a standardized fee split to fund public goods. Each member chain follows the Standard Rollup Charter. This model prevents special treatment for any single chain. Developers can apply for grants to build impactful applications on any OP Stack chain. Optimism Governance decides how these funds support the growing ecosystem. While Optimism prepares for interoperability, Arbitrum scales performance through Stylus. Stylus uses WebAssembly to enable smart contracts in Rust, C++, and AssemblyScript. These contracts achieve execution speeds of 50 to 100 ms. This speed beats the 200 to 300 ms range seen in the Arbitrum EVM. Arbitrum paused new Stylus contract activations because of concerns regarding AI-driven attacks.

Base and the creator economy

Base dominates the L2 market with high revenue and deep liquidity. In 2025, Base generated $75.4 million in revenue. Applications within the Base ecosystem earned $369.9 million during that same year. Aerodrome contributed $160.5 million, which is 43% of total application revenue. The Virtuals platform achieved $43.2 million in revenue. The network focuses on a "Base App" to capture the creator economy. This market size ranges from $235 billion to $600 billion in 2026. The global creator population exceeds 200 million people, with 50 million working professionally or semi-professionally. About 2 million creators earn six figures, whereas 48.7% of creators earn under $10,000 a year. While most content on the internet lacks intrinsic value, the Base App targets creators who produce high-value content that remains actively traded on the network 48 hours after its initial issuance. Of the 6.52 million content tokens tokenized through Zora, only 17,800 tokens remained actively traded 48 hours after issuance. Content creators using the Base App earn 1% of transaction fees from their content. The platform tokenizes content using the Zora protocol. The monthly active users of the Base App reached 10,500 in November. Base leverages Coinbase to reach 9.3 million monthly active trading users.

zkSync paymasters and L2 concentration

zkSync Era uses paymasters to subsidize transaction fees via account abstraction. These specialized accounts implement the IPaymaster interface. Users must specify a non-zero paymaster address in their EIP712 transaction. This mechanism allows developers to cover transaction costs for users to improve accessibility. Users manage ERC20 allowances with a process that can significantly impact gas usage, especially when a user sets an allowance for the first time. This process might require publishing a 32-byte storage key identifier, which can use up to 400k gas at a 50 gwei L1 gas price. The L2 market shows heavy concentration, and you should select your L2 based on ecosystem fit rather than technical differences. Base, Arbitrum, and Optimism process nearly 90% of all L2 transactions. Smaller rollups often function as zombie chains with evaporating liquidity and minimal activity. Kinto shut down entirely and Blast saw its total value locked collapse 97%. Major DeFi protocols like Aave scaled back deployments on weaker L2s. Will the massive liquidity in the top L2s eventually starve the remaining smaller rollups?