Linea becomes latest casualty as Arkham cuts L2s based on ‘importance to crypto’
Arkham Intelligence, a outstanding crypto analytics and change platform, has introduced it would not present help for the Linea blockchain on its intelligence platform from January 11.
The choice comes amid a periodic assessment, which Arkham carries out to find out how related a series is predicated on elements like person demand and its total significance to the crypto trade.
Arkham’s latest cuts this 12 months have focused L2s
Arkham shared its plan to chop Linea’s help on January 9 by way of its official X web page, claiming Linea, which is an Ethereum layer-2 community developed by Consensys, had seemingly fallen wanting its standards.
Whereas the X publish didn’t point out precisely which standards failed to satisfy, many within the feedback part speculated that it have to be as a result of it isn’t producing sufficient exercise or there’s barely any curiosity from customers to justify the price of its upkeep.
Extra importantly, Linea will not be the one L2 to be reduce by Arkham, Manta blockchain, and the Blast community are additionally set to be eliminated on January 11, in line with bulletins shared by way of their X web page. Solely these three have thus far been introduced, and the bulletins all got here inside days of one another after we entered the brand new 12 months.
Final 12 months, there have been no information of any such drops by Arkham, highlighting the beginning of a development that signifies Arkham could also be eliminating the much less related or used chains as a part of its routine optimization.
Reactions to the removing have been principally blended, with customers highlighting considerations about how this may lead to diminished visibility for Linea and Manta, making it more durable to trace token actions or dumps with out Arkham’s assist.
Does Arkham nonetheless help any L2?
In response to knowledge from Arkham’s platform, the remaining Ethereum Layer 2 networks that survived the latest culling embody Arbitrum, Base, Mantle, Optimism, and Polygon, particularly Polygon zkEVM.
They’re all well-known as Ethereum scaling options, and due to the Dencun improve from 2024, which outsourced transaction execution to the L2s, they’re much less parasitic of their relationship with Ethereum, the Layer 1 all of them function on.
This has elevated their relevance, making certain they are going to proceed to see utilization throughout key metrics as extra customers transact on ETH. It has additionally freed the L1 to deal with being a safe settlement and knowledge availability layer, whereas outsourcing the precise site visitors to the L2s.
The Dencun improve launched protodanksharding — the usage of blobs — which offer a devoted area for L2 knowledge that doesn’t compete with normal Ethereum transactions.
In 2025, subsequent upgrades just like the Pectra and Fusaka upgrades constructed on the Dencun replace by rising the blob capability. Nevertheless, the Dencun improve was the pivotal one which made the concept viable.
The following improve to happen would be the Glasterdam improve, scheduled for the primary half of 2026, which is anticipated to considerably improve the variety of blobs the Ethereum chain can deal with, subsequently boosting the capability of its L2s. There are additionally plans to extend the blob capability by way of full danksharding, however the timeline for that’s at present unknown.
