L1 blockchain Kadena recently announced that it was shutting down, blamining "market conditions".

The industry keeps arguing about throughput and fees while ignoring the number that actually kills chains: operating expenses.

There is a structural reality most people still do not internalize:

Running an Ethereum L2 is on the order of ~99% cheaper than running a sovereign L1.

This has been widely attested to, most recently by Celo founder Marek. [1]

This is a consequence of how security is paid for. And once you see this, the outcome for most independent L1s is obvious.

Sovereignty Is a Fixed Cost

Launching a sovereign L1 is not just building software. It is committing to permanently fund your own security budget.

You must pay validators every block:

• for consensus,
• for availability,
• for attack resistance.

That cost does not care about usage.

Whether the chain processes millions of transactions or none at all, the validator set still has to be paid. The network cannot "idle."

In bull markets, token prices hide this. In bear markets, the subsidy collapses while the security bill does not.

Sovereign L1s have fixed costs with variable revenue. That mismatch is fatal.

L2s Flip the Cost Model

An Ethereum L2 blockchain does not maintain its own standing security force. It outsources finality.

Execution happens off-chain. Only proofs and data are posted to Ethereum.

This creates a completely different cost structure:

• Sovereign L1: pays for security continuously.
• Ethereum L2: pays for security only when it settles.

If an L2 has no users, it posts nothing. Its marginal cost drops close to zero. There is no requirement to keep producing blocks for an empty chain.

It can pause without dying.

That single property explains most of the "99% difference".

Fixed vs Variable Survival

Sovereign L1s

• Own the security stack
• Fixed burn rate
• Require constant subsidy
• Fail when markets turn

Ethereum L2s

• Rent settlement
• Usage-linked costs
• Can shrink to zero activity
• Survive indefinitely

This is not a matter of better engineering. It is basic cost structure.

Why Settlement Consolidates

Once sovereignty is understood as an ongoing liability, outsourcing security becomes the rational choice.

But security can only be rented from something that is itself economically durable.

You cannot anchor to a chain that depends on perpetual token inflation to survive. You cannot settle to a layer whose own security budget is fragile.

You need a settlement layer with:

• the highest economic security,
• no dependency on short-term revenue,
• and credible neutrality.

That narrows the field dramatically.

This is why settlement keeps consolidating onto Ethereum. Not because of ideology, branding, or culture, but because it is the only place where offloading security actually reduces existential risk.

Bottom Line

Kadena did not fail because it lacked ideas. It failed because it carried a fixed security cost into a type of market where fixed costs kill you.

The ~99% cost gap means that the vast majority of crypto platforms in the future will be Ethereum-based L2 blockchains.

In the long run, chains either externalize security to a dominant settlement layer, or they exhaust themselves paying for sovereignty no one is using.

[1] https://api.growthepie.com/v1/quick-bites/anniversary-report/Building%20the%20World%20Ledger.pdf "As a Layer 1, Celo was responsible for its own security, which required subsidizing its set of 110 validators. At a rate of $59,000 per validator annually, this amounted to a total security expenditure of nearly $6.5 million per year. Based on the 320 million transactions processed in 2024, the security cost alone was about $0.02 per transaction."