This post was written as part of the Lens x Kiwi Writing Contest.

I’ve written about culture’s tendency to diverge and converge and eventually speciate into distinct cultures. So distinct do these cultures become, in fact, that you could place any real-world example of polar opposites and find a common ancestor for 99% of situations.

Conservatism vs. Liberalism all stem from core beliefs around innovation. The human gene pool, milliard nation states, and even language itself are nothing but endless iterations and branching-offs. Similarly, most tech making up the current (and future) web stems from the same core principles and the questions that arise along the way as new people use tech in new ways that suit their times and needs.

So, when I say L2s are just the Internet re-treading its steps, I don’t mean it in a derogatory way. It’s in the nature of things to find common ground as we explore what we believe to be new and unexplored lands.

When computers first rose to prominence, there was an academic space-race to find the most efficient way to translate binary into human-perceptible commands. This era gave rise to the first programming languages. After that, new generations of computer scientists, tech employees, and garage-bound nerds sought to create their spins on these proto-code systems to ease their work, satisfy an employer’s wants, or just try out cool experiments of their own: like the first iterations of generative art, the first homebrew computer OS’s, and the first questions about the privacy, scalability, distribution and attribution of computer code.

I single out those four questions in particular because they are the exact same questions we’re looking to solve, just in a categorical way rather than in an effort to fit a specific company or individual’s requirements. But that’s getting ahead of myself.

As the internet itself entered the scene, these four questions led much of the conversation. We had a channel with which anyone’s code could belong to the world in an instant, no floppy disks in envelopes being shared like trading cards. With immediate distribution came the need to protect the creator from accidental fame. A sudden burst of attention could be dangerous in more ways than one for the unprepared. An improperly licensed repository of code could be stolen, a badly attributed dependency could turn a weekend jam into a year-long lawsuit, and for some, putting their name out there could mean attracting the attention of some ill-intentioned netizens with whom they shared a space.

During this second era, code took on a new shape. Interest turned from the OS and motherboard and onto the web. This was truly an unsung shift in the way people thought and used code, one that prevails to this day. How many people do you know who code on Assembly vs React?

This new batch of programming languages focused on building upon their predecessors to create the building blocks of the web. A layout markup language gave rise to a cascading styles language and then an animation and transitions language. It made perfect sense to build a hammer before making a saw. As such, most of the original web-oriented programming languages are still relevant today, even PHP.

These waves aren’t unique. Similar to the previous two, we saw how Silicon Valley-fueled languages like Java, GO, React, C++, and Swift incentivized tapping into existing and flourishing ecosystems. Anyone who’s ever learned Swift does so thinking of the sweet perks of the App Store, not whatever they’re looking to build.

And this is where we’re currently at. You learn to build thinking of what kind of perks and ecosystems you want to tap into, even if most of them end up looking pretty similar at the end of the day. Sure, the syntax, specific advantages or use cases may change a bit, but making a game using Python to C++ is equally feasible.

If we continue this thread into what it means for future blockchains and L2s, the answer is, and always will be: people will always find a need they want to prioritize, or feel their current solution isn’t prioritizing enough. Scalability, Privacy, Distribution, and Attribution are deep, deep rabbit holes on their own, and sometimes what’s best for one will hinder the other.

As with protocols, the function of a chain is to contain a set of behaviors. As we’ve seen in the divergence of crypto apps in the past year, a simple transaction hash can point to a message, an amount, a sentiment, or even a piece of your identity.

As Vitalik described in the seminal piece that inspired this one, even Ethereum is branching off into cultures and sub-cultures that each represent the original chain in their own way but have their own distinct set of needs and identities tied to the kinds of usage they want to give it.

In that same manner, each chain would (and probably will) continue to nurture a tribe for specific use cases like the API calls of a social platform. A PGF widget that opens the gates to OP, or a degenerate trading platform with a social component. Many people seem to think apps are the way forward for crypto right now, but I’d rather consider them the end-state of an already successful interoperable system.

It's not that we need new kinds of infrastructure, but better and more efficient ways to implement the tooling from several ecosystems into one same application. the social space has majorly led this race, with DeFi lagging behind in many aspects. And that's because, as many of us have described, the media always leads the way.

Just browse through Lens or FC, and you'll find native solutions for expertly woven cross-chain experiences. Arweave for this, and the ARB stack for that, with a little sprinkle of ETH for good measure. The cultures in these ecosystems are distinct enough to perceive them the same way you would a programming language, as a tool for a job with a certain set of incentives, or a calling strong enough to look past the hindrances.

I could visualize a future where apps built on Ethereum use Arbitrum for a specific perk, then tie another website functionality to Optimism and yet another to the Aleo L1. The future of L2s is synchronized and parallel. The tribalism and extremism of believing any ledger will be enough for everything is a belief best left in the bear market.