Skepists of Ethereum’s roll-up-centered roadmap speculate that the Layer 2 network could ultimately peel off from the ecosystem. The concern was that the roll-up team got tired of paying Ethereum’s data availability fees and plunged into the Sovereign Layer 1 chain using its own variator.
But so far, that hasn’t happened. Instead, gravity pull flows in other ways. Independent Layer-1 is reorganizing itself as the Ethereum L2.
Celero and risk are two notable examples. CELO was launched in 2020 and aims to build a mobile-first, payment-centric L1 with its own stubcoin and identity layer. Lisk’s Origins dates back even further back to 2016 when it was launched with the focus on onboarding JavaScript developers via custom SDKs and sidechains.
However, by the 2022-2023 bare market, both faced the general challenges found in many middle class L1s. It is difficult to attract and maintain users beyond limited liquidity, fragmented developer ecosystems, and niche use cases.
Rather than doubled the independence, both chains chose to connect to Ethereum. CELO completed the migration in March 2025 and rebooted as an OP stack rollup using Eigenda for data availability.
“It was the right time to go back to Ethereum,” Cello co-founder Rene Reinsberg told BlockWorks, citing new infrastructure like the Rollup-in-A-Box stack. “This allowed CELO to maintain its unique technical advantages as gas currency, such as one block finality, sub-cent gas fees and ERC-20 tokens.
Celo says the community has overwhelmingly supported the shift, and in unanimous votes through Onchain Governance and proposals reviewed in public calls and open forums.
“The open building was a core priority,” Rainsburg said.
The results are shown in the metrics. According to CELO, daily active users have reached the top 600,000, with Stablecoin transfers reaching over 123 million wallets. The chain also reports a monthly volume of stubcoins exceeding $1 billion and a 365% increase in protocol revenue since the transition. Mento, Celo’s Onchain FX platform, has recently processed more than $200 million in a day.
Much of the use is driven by real-world applications like Minipay, a mobile wallet integrated into Opera’s browser.
“Mini Pie is built for everyday users,” the team said, saying it has recently surpassed its 8 million revitalization wallet. Meanwhile, Defi integration was accelerated, with the Aave V3 hit the initial supply cap, urging Governance to raise USDT, ETH and CELO limits.
The Lisk path followed a similar arc. In May 2024, I migrated my LSK token to Ethereum and rebooted it as an OP stack rollup using Blobspace from Ethereum on DA. The “DAO Season 1” campaign reportedly attracted over 277,000 new accounts and 48 million deals. Lisk is currently betting on distribution and Ethereum native interoperability to strengthen its next stage of growth.
“The so-called “crisis” in Ethereum was by no means a different ecosystem,” Risk Chief Operator Dominique Schventer told Blockworks.
“The projects are participating and interoperating with the Ethereum ecosystem rather than competing, and they set the highest meaning of expanding technology at the most decentralized level possible,” he said.
The contrast with the feared L2-L1 story is harsh, with few examples of pivot success. Dydx left Starkex in 2023 for Cosmos Appchain. Starknet continues to post data to Ethereum, with all the major rollups launched since 2021 – Arbitrum, Base, Op Mainnet, Zksync, Unichain and Linea being pinned to Ethereum.
