Scroll DAO announces suspension of governance: the tug-of-war between decentralization vision and commercialization unveils the survival crisis of the L2 ecosystem.

Ethereum L2 Scroll DAO announced a suspension of governance, accompanied by leadership resignations and internal uncertainties, raising concerns within the community about a retreat from its ideals of decentralization. This not only shook the confidence of the Scroll community but also reignited discussions about the future sustainability of the L2 model.

Leadership exits, Scroll announces "pause" in governance.

Olimpio, a member of Scroll DAO, pointed out today that Scroll DAO announced a "temporary" halt to governance activities during today's governance trustee meeting. The reason is that core leadership members have resigned one after another, and there seems to be no further planning for subsequent handling and next steps.

X： @DefiIgnas

Among them, the DAO leader Eugene had already submitted his resignation several days ago; co-founder Haichen Shen stated in the meeting that the team is working on redesigning the governance structure; and the growth leader Raza also deliberately emphasized that this is not a "termination" or "dissolution," but rather a "suspension."

The four existing proposals for representation are still valid, but whether they can be successfully voted on and implemented remains a question mark.

Olimpio emphasized that the internal team is unexpectedly unfamiliar with the progress of existing proposals and past decisions, and speculated on the main reasons for this change:

The team wants to "minimize governance power" and shift towards centralized governance, so they have suspended the DAO.

Nowadays, various changes have made the future governance of Scroll DAO even more perplexing.

Researchers Analyze the Dilemma of Decentralization: The Tug of War Between Ideal and Reality

Researcher Haotian has raised deeper criticisms on this matter, arguing that Scroll was never able to achieve the trustless characteristics of the decentralized sequencer (Sequencer), and now even the governance of the DAO is difficult to sustain, symbolizing that this experiment of decentralized zkEVM has already failed.

But he emphasized that this may not be a bad thing. When the team tries to accelerate commercialization, the governance of the DAO may instead become a hindrance. Since it cannot be technically guaranteed that there is true decentralization, the existence of formal governance appears hollow; it is better to fully embrace flexibility and efficiency to seek rebirth.

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L2 ecosystem lacks development potential, high-performance L1 is the future?

Haotian pointed out that the governance turmoil of Scroll has allowed the outside world to reassess the future of the entire L2.

He admitted that the departure of core developers from the Optimism team, along with Hyperliquid and Stripe choosing to build their own L1 blockchain, reflects the fragility of the L2 technology narrative. Those new chains that still rely on the L2 architecture, such as Base, Robinhood, and Upbit, may also choose to break away from L2 towards autonomy in the future:

Generic L2 will inevitably be defeated in the confrontation with high-performance L1, relying solely on the security inheritance of Ethereum will not support the ecological prosperity of L2.

He added: "They either need to transform into specific-purpose L2s to compete with other L1s, or they can only wait to be eliminated by the market."

(No one cares about your chain: After enterprise-level L1 vertical integration, is there still a place for Ethereum and L2?)

Haotian: Ethereum technology debt liquidation may be more brutal in the future.

From a broader industry perspective, this governance pause is also seen as a case of clearing Ethereum's technical debt. Scroll may just be the beginning, and more L2s along with their DAOs will face similar choices in the future.

The governance of Scroll DAO has been suspended, allowing the outside world to witness the fragility of decentralization experiments, and revealing the difficulties in the ongoing balance between technology, governance, and commercialization in Layer 2 models. It is not hard to imagine that its every move in the future will become an important barometer for the development of the L2 ecosystem.

This article Scroll DAO announces the suspension of governance: the tug-of-war between decentralization vision and commercialization unveils the survival crisis of the L2 ecosystem, first appearing in Chain News ABMedia.