finally understand why eth whales are accumulating infrastructure exposure and not just l2 tokens

I was talking to someone at a crypto meetup who manages a decent sized portfolio and he said something that completely reframed how I think about eth ecosystem investing. He said "stop thinking about which l2 wins and start thinking about what every l2 needs." Every l2 needs sequencer infrastructure, data availability solutions, bridging mechanisms, and deployment tooling. The protocols and companies providing those services capture value from the entire l2 ecosystem regardless of which individual chain has the most tvl at any given moment.It's like during a gold rush you don't invest in individual prospectors, you invest in the company selling pickaxes and shovels. The infrastructure always wins. I started digging into what's powering the l2 ecosystem behind the scenes and was surprised by how concentrated the infrastructure layer is. A huge number of rollups including some well known ones are built on the same few underlying platforms. That kind of concentration creates a very compelling investment thesis if you think the number of rollups is going to keep growing.

a16z and paradigm have been saying this for years now but retail is still mostly focused on trading individual l2 tokens based on tvl metrics. I think over the next 12 to 18 months the market is going to wake up to the infrastructure layer and reprice accordingly. Shifted about 25% of my eth ecosystem allocation toward infrastructure exposure and already feeling better about the risk profile compared to being concentrated in individual l2 token bets.