Rollups stopped competing on cost and started competing on distribution

Data availability changes pushed rollup transaction costs low enough that the difference between networks is no longer material to a user. A tenth of a cent against three tenths does not influence behaviour.

What does influence behaviour is where an application already sits, which wallet defaults to what, and which network a large consumer brand chose. Competition moved from engineering to business development, and the leaderboard reordered accordingly.

What still separates them technically

• Withdrawal latency, which ranges from minutes to a week and matters enormously to anyone moving size.
• Sequencer decentralisation, still largely aspirational across the field.
• Whether the escape hatch has ever been exercised, as opposed to documented.
• Data availability choice, which is a security assumption dressed as a cost decision.

We picked the chain our largest partner was already on. The technical comparison took an afternoon and changed nothing.

What to watch

Shared sequencing. If it arrives properly, distribution advantages weaken and the ordering changes again.