Kraken, Sony, Uniswap All Launched Their Own L2: What Does the Enterprise Rollup Wave Actually Mean?
Within roughly twelve months three things happened in sequence. Kraken launched INK. Sony launched Soneium. Uniswap launched UniChain. Add Coinbase’s Base, which has already locked the top slot, and the pattern is clear. Self-built L2s shifted from a crypto-native experiment to a default move for traditional firms and application giants.
This piece unpacks three questions. Why is everyone building their own chain? What technical choices are they making? What does this wave mean for mainnet, other L2s, and regular users?
If L2 basics are still fuzzy, start with layer2-guide and what is op stack explained. I will not re-explain rollup mechanics here.
The 2025-2026 enterprise L2 lineup
| Name | Sponsor | Launched | Stack | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base | Coinbase | Aug 2023 | OP Stack | General consumer chain |
| INK | Kraken | Dec 2024 | OP Stack (Superchain) | Exchange-extended chain |
| Soneium | Sony Block Solutions | Jan 2025 | OP Stack | Entertainment / IP / games |
| UniChain | Uniswap Labs | Feb 2025 | OP Stack | DEX-optimized chain |
| Worldchain | Tools for Humanity | Oct 2024 | OP Stack | Human-verified social |
| Gnosis Pay Chain | Gnosis | Q3 2025 | OP Stack | Payments / debit |
| Mode | Mode Foundation | Q2 2024 | OP Stack | DeFi-focused |
| Cyber | Cyber.co | Q2 2024 | OP Stack | SocialFi |
| Lens Network | Lens / Avara | Q1 2025 | ZK Stack | Social graph |
Notice anything? Almost every one uses OP Stack except Lens. This is not random. The Superchain protocol Optimism launched in 2024 lets any L2 plug into a shared bridge and governance, dramatically lowering the cost of launching.
Why large companies want their own L2
Talking to engineers who shipped some of these chains, five motivations dominate.
1. Capturing onchain activity as revenue
When Coinbase users trade on mainnet, gas fees go to Ethereum. On Base, they go to Coinbase. If you already have 100 million users, you want a cut of their onchain activity. Same logic for INK (Kraken) and UniChain (Uniswap).
2. Performance can be tuned to one business
UniChain does not need NFT minting, social graphs, or game battles. It serves swaps. Its sequencer is tuned for high-frequency small swaps, pushing confirmation under 250ms. This is the difference between the Solana path (one general fast chain) and app-specific chains. The latter suits application giants.
3. Compliance and brand control
Sony’s Soneium states plainly that certain functions will be gated by user jurisdiction. You cannot do that on mainnet. You can on your own L2. Sony’s IP also needs a home base they control, not a permissionless environment. Controversial from a values standpoint, attractive commercially.
4. Inherited security via Superchain
Five years ago, launching a chain required bootstrapping validators. OP Stack plus Superchain lets you inherit mainnet security and share bridge liquidity. The barrier dropped by an order of magnitude.
How this changes mainnet
A simple causal-chain analysis:
| Change | Short term (1y) | Mid term (2-3y) |
|---|---|---|
| L1 tx fees | Slightly down (L2 takes traffic) | Depends on blob economy |
| L1 security revenue (blob fees) | Slightly up | Significantly up (more L2s competing for blobs) |
| L1 user count | Slightly down | Stabilizes |
| L1 strategic role | Settlement + security | Pure settlement + data |
Plainly, Ethereum mainnet evolves into the clearinghouse behind a financial infrastructure web. Day-to-day users barely touch it, but every L2 and enterprise chain eventually settles to it.
Is this positioning a good or bad outcome? Depends what you optimize for. If you weight ETH fee burn, short term it is mixed. If you weight the network’s long-term role, this is exactly its strongest seat.
I dig into this clearinghouse narrative and its effect on ETH valuation in eth spot etf real effects 2026.
What it means for other L2s
Established L2s (Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, Linea) feel real pressure:
- Traffic siphoning. Sony’s IP users will stay on Soneium, not migrate to Arbitrum.
- Application-specific threat. Once Uniswap moves core trading to UniChain, Arbitrum and Optimism lose a meaningful DEX slice.
- Ecosystem consolidation. The bigger Superchain gets, the more Optimism Collective behaves like the dominant platform. Arbitrum DAO must respond, which is exactly what Orbit and Stylus are.
In my arbitrum vs optimism vs base comparison I called out Optimism’s Superchain bet. The result is in: OP Stack is the de facto Android of L2s, and Optimism captured the platform layer.
What it means for users
Three concrete changes:
1. More chains in your wallet
If you use Uniswap, Coinbase, and a Sony game, your MetaMask network list will hold five or six L2s. That is why Interop Layer matters so much. Its job is to make you forget the chains exist.
2. Fragmented liquidity
Each app chain needs its own stablecoin float and LP. Short term you will hit “wanted to swap but depth was thin.” This is why the shared bridge concept is critical.
3. Polarized service quality
Enterprise chains can polish a single workflow obsessively (UniChain swap slippage can drop below 0.05%). To enjoy that you must enter their ecosystem. It feels like the mobile-internet super-app era. Better service, but more lock-in.
The Solana counterargument
Solana proponents read this trend very differently:
- “Putting all apps on one chain is the right answer, because liquidity, users, and composability come for free.”
- “L2 + enterprise chain = fragmented Ethereum.”
I unpacked this in ethereum vs solana 2026 deep comparison. Short version:
- Ethereum path. Many chains plus Interop, allowing differentiated compliance and performance.
- Solana path. One chain plus extreme performance, allowing global composability.
Which wins depends on what the market values. Short term, both coexist and split the user base.
My read on the wave
Three takeaways:
- Enterprise L2s are the right direction. They extend Web3 from crypto-native to traditional giants, which is the single largest user-growth lane.
- Most enterprise L2s will quietly underperform. Not via incidents but via failure to attract enough independent developers. They will end up as “mostly an internal chain for the parent’s users,” which is fine for the parent. They wanted control, not breadth.
- The real platform winner is OP Stack and the Optimism Collective. When everyone uses your open-source framework, you are not a chain. You are the L2 era’s Android. This long-term value is plausibly underrated.
True and false propositions inside the enterprise rollup wave
If you use mainnet plus Arbitrum plus Base today, you will be using more chains soon. Anyone who swapped on UniChain is already in this new map.
The response is not picking sides. It is knowing which chain each tx sits on, who you pay fees to, and where settlement lands. Chain-awareness will become baseline literacy for the next generation, like learning WiFi versus cellular.
Ethereum is not being replaced. It is being decomposed. L1 handles settlement, L2 handles execution, enterprise chains handle differentiation. That is both the challenge and how Ethereum scales to the next billion users.