Cross-Pollination: Virtually all plants require pollination before they can bear fruit. Nature is indifferent to method, adapting animals, gravity, wind, and fire to accomplish its innate goal. A similar pragmatic approach is emerging in the crypto tech stack. Base layers are too slow and too expensive for mass adoption. Ethereum is averaging around 650 transactions a minute this year at an average cost between $2 to $30. Layer 2s are built with the goal of creating abundant throughput speeds at lower costs – key for user experience and adoption. The initial race focused on intellectual property across different camps, like optimistic roll-ups and zero-knowledge proofs. That’s changing. These blockchains are becoming less siloed and are beginning to adopt any technology that provides a compelling experience. One of the original optimistic rollups, Optimism, is soliciting the integration of zero-knowledge tooling. O1 Labs bid publicly to provide those services. These networks were competitors only a year ago. Now? Whatever works. Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync are inviting developers to copy-paste their chains, adding software developer kits (“SDKs”) to accelerate layer 2 startups. The proliferation should lead to mutation, discovery, and fertile ground. But it surrenders control of the competitive landscape. The conversation has shifted from capturing critical dApps that drive user engagement to broad network effects anchored to replicating a specific layer 2 infrastructure – either Arbitrum, Optimism, or zkSync in this case. What will emerge? No orchard emerges from an overgrown field without cross-pollination. Nature succeeds by any and every means available.