The growing negative sentiment around crypto’s current infrastructural bloat and absence of consumer applications is reaching a fever pitch.

It’s such a familiar talking point across social media and podcasts that it has largely become a consensus view. Prior cycles saw the innovation of smart contract-enabled blockchains, ICOs, DeFi, layer-2s and NFTs, but the bulk of the present cycle’s new tools are memecoins and increasingly redundant infrastructure. 

By L2Beat’s count, there are already 71 live L2s, with another 82 incoming. And that’s not even counting layer-3s. Why so many? The most obvious explanation is that it’s profitable to launch one.

In an industry where…

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