Districts · L1 Downtown
Ethereum
The capital. Every L2 eventually posts its data here (blobs) and settles here. A new block (slot) is produced every 12 seconds, and the lighthouse stands for the beacon chain (consensus).
Ethereum mainnet, live since July 2015, is where everything in this city is finally recorded. The Merge in September 2022 replaced mining with proof of stake; today validators who have staked ETH produce a block every 12 seconds.
The Dencun upgrade in March 2024 added cheap data space called blobs, which cut L2 fees sharply. L2s bundle transactions, post the data in blobs and settle here. So although downtown itself does not carry many transactions, it carries the security and the record of the whole city.
Ethereum L1’s fee market was fundamentally redesigned in the August 2021 London upgrade (EIP-1559). The base fee, which rises and falls automatically with blockspace demand, is burned by the protocol rather than paid to validators, while users add an optional priority tip for faster inclusion. Higher network activity burns more ETH, offsetting new issuance and tying network usage directly to the asset’s supply dynamics.
On the security front, Ethereum operates as a globally distributed settlement layer backed by tens of millions of staked ETH across hundreds of thousands of validator nodes. Unlike newer high-speed chains that rely on a single sequencer or a small committee, censoring transactions or reversing finalized blocks on Ethereum L1 is economically and cryptographically impractical—making it the primary vault for institutional capital, major DeFi protocols, and stablecoin reserves.
| Type | L1 · settlement & data availability |
|---|---|
| Technology | Ethereum PoS |
| Fees are paid in | ETH |
| District weather follows | the market-cap-weighted change of this district’s tokens (ETH, LINK, LEO, UNI …) |
Weather in the Monday, October 19, 2026 morning edition: ⛅ Cloudy +0.3% · Morning Edition →
Main tokens on this chain
- 🏦 USDCUSD CoinBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 USDTTetherBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 DAIDaiBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 USDSSky DollarBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 USDeEthena USDeBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 RLUSDRipple USDBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 PYUSDPayPal USDBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 USD1World Liberty USD1Banks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 FDUSDFirst Digital USDBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 EURCEuro CoinBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 USDGLOGlo DollarBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 frxUSDFrax USDBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 EUReMonerium EURBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
- 🏦 AUSDAgora DollarBanks & exchange counters (stablecoins)
A selection of the 548 tokens in the site’s registry for this chain.
Related essays
- Why Ethereum Chose the Rollup-Centric Roadmap Instead of Executing Everything on L1Beyond the physical limits of a monolithic chain: how downtown L1 and satellite L2 districts divide labor
- Inside EIP-4844 Blobs: The Temporary Data Containers That Slashed L2 Fees by 90%How moving from permanent calldata to 18-day expiring blob space reshaped rollup economics
- What Sequencers Do—and Why Based Rollups Like Taiko Hand Ordering Back to L1Inside the design trade-offs between sub-second UX, sequencer revenue, and L1-grade censorship resistance
- Rollups, Validiums, and Optimiums: Where Does the Transaction Data Actually Live?Comparing Ethereum blobs against external data availability layers like EigenDA and committees
- The Beacon Tower and Ethereum’s 12-Second Heartbeat: How Proof of Stake WorksFrom energy-intensive mining to validators, 12-second slots, 32-slot epochs, and economic finality
- The Economics of Ethereum Gas: EIP-1559 Base Fee Burning and Traffic CongestionWhy downtown toll rates adjust every 12 seconds and where the burned ETH goes
- How Blockchain Bridges Work: From Canonical Lock-and-Mint to Fast Intent RelayersWhy native rollup withdrawals take days while intent-based bridges move funds across districts in seconds
- Account Abstraction (ERC-4337 & EIP-7702): Smart Wallets Without 12-Word Seed PhrasesHow passkeys, gas fee coverage, and batch transactions make on-chain apps feel like the everyday web
- How Stablecoins (USDT, USDC, USDS, USDe) Became the Lifeblood of Ethereum CityComparing fiat-backed reserves, overcollateralized vaults, and delta-neutral synthetic dollars
- Real-World Assets (RWA) and Tokenized Securities: Why Treasuries and Stocks Are Moving On-ChainFrom tokenized US Treasury funds and gold to Robinhood Chain’s dedicated equity L2
- Inside MEV and Block Building: The Invisible Race to Order TransactionsFrom arbitrage and sandwich attacks to Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) and TEE block building
- Flash Loans and Atomic Composability: Borrowing Millions for Zero Seconds with Zero CollateralHow Ethereum’s all-or-nothing transaction execution turns DeFi protocols into programmable Money Legos
- Parallel EVM and Real-Time Blockchains: Inside the Speed Race of Monad, Sei, and MegaETHHow optimistic parallel execution, custom state databases, and 10ms mini-blocks break sequential bottlenecks
- Liquid Staking (Lido & Rocket Pool) and Restaking (EigenLayer): Putting Staked ETH to WorkHow stETH, rETH, and EigenDA unlock capital efficiency and shared cryptographic security
- Ethereum’s Upgrade Chronicle: How Dencun (2024), Pectra (May 2025), and Fusaka (Dec 2025) Reshaped the CityFrom the birth of EIP-4844 blobs to EIP-7702 smart wallets, validator consolidation, and PeerDAS
- On-Chain Wallet Security: How to Guard Against Unlimited Token Approvals and Permit PhishingWhy wallets get drained without exposing a seed phrase—and how vault separation keeps your assets safe
- Reading On-Chain Metrics Without Illusions: Market Cap, FDV, TVL, Stablecoin Supply, and TPSHow to separate genuine economic activity from low-float valuations and bot traffic
- Inside Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs): Automated Market Makers, Concentrated Liquidity, and Impermanent LossHow the x * y = k formula replaced traditional order books on-chain—and why Uniswap built Unichain
- How On-Chain Lending Works Without Credit Scores: Inside Aave, Morpho, and Automated LiquidationsOvercollateralization, utilization rate interest curves, and health-factor liquidations explained
- Oracles—The Eyes and Ears of Smart Contracts: How Chainlink Brings Off-Chain Truth On-ChainWhy blockchains cannot fetch web APIs directly and how decentralized price feeds prevent flash-loan manipulation
- What Governance Tokens (ARB, OP, UNI, MNT, AAVE) Actually Do: How DAOs Run District Treasuries and UpgradesInside on-chain voting, delegation, billion-dollar treasuries, and bicameral governance
- Memecoins (PEPE, SHIB) and the On-Chain Attention Economy: Why Joke Tokens Drive Serious TrafficUnderstanding community-driven tokens, infrastructure stress tests, and the risks of extreme volatility
- Why Wrapped Assets (WETH, WBTC, cbBTC) Exist: Putting ETH and Bitcoin Inside ERC-20 ContainersWhy native ETH needed an ERC-20 wrapper and how custodial and threshold bridges bring Bitcoin into DeFi
- Zero-Knowledge Proofs Beyond Scaling: Proving You Are Human Without Revealing Who You AreHow ZK cryptography powers privacy-preserving credentials, proof of personhood on World Chain, and confidential payments
- From `0x71C…` to `vitalik.eth`: How the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) Works as the City’s Address BookTurning 42-character hexadecimal strings into human-readable, censorship-resistant on-chain profiles
- The Architecture of Ethereum City: How Raw On-Chain Data Becomes a Living 3D MetropolisDecoding the six visual languages of the city—skyline, ring roads, bridge vehicles, weather, shops, and citizen houses
- From Proof of Stake to Proof of Liquidity (PoL): Inside Berachain’s Tri-Token EconomyWhy Berachain split gas (BERA), non-transferable governance (BGT), and stablecoin settlement (HONEY)
- What Happens When an L2 Winds Down? Lessons from Polygon zkEVM, Blast, and Arbitrum NovaHow L1 settlement protects user funds during chain sunsets and how Ethereum City preserves historical records
- Golden Armored Vans and Helicopters: How On-Chain Whale Tracking Actually WorksInside ERC-20 `Transfer` event logs, canonical bridge deposits, and how to interpret large capital flows
- How Your Browser Reads 39 Blockchains at Once: Inside JSON-RPC Nodes and Live Chain PollingThe open communication standard that lets wallets and Ethereum City query live blocks without a central database
- The Ethereum City Citizen’s Handbook: From Claiming Your House to Forecasting Tomorrow’s WeatherHow to join a district with zero personal data, upgrade your home from a cottage to a castle, and read the morning paper
- Modular vs. Monolithic Blockchains: Comparing Ethereum’s Mainland Rollups with High-Speed L1 IslandsHow separating execution, settlement, and data availability compares against doing everything on one layer
- The Rise of On-Chain AI Agents: Why Autonomous Software Uses Smart Wallets Instead of Bank AccountsHow session keys, sub-cent L2 stablecoin rails, and districts like Mode and Base power machine-to-machine commerce
- What Is ‘Economic Security’? Why Blockchain Safety Is Measured in the Cost to AttackFrom Proof-of-Stake slashing bonds to how L2 rollups and EigenDA rent downtown Ethereum’s multi-billion-dollar shield
- Fighting State Bloat: How Statelessness and Next-Generation State Trees Keep Home Nodes AliveWhy growing account state is harder than historical block storage—and how tiny cryptographic witnesses solve it
- Where Does On-Chain Yield Actually Come From? Four Sources of Real Yield vs. Token InflationDistinguishing validator rewards, borrow interest, swap fees, and Treasury bills from unsustainable emissions
- The Future of Ethereum City: ‘Chain Abstraction’ and a Metropolis Where District Borders DisappearHow ERC-7683 cross-chain intents, unified smart wallets, and real-time ZK proofs make 39 chains feel like one
Outside links
Facts on this page are as of 2026-10 and may change. If you spot a mistake, please tell us through the contact page.