> L2s are the PayPals etc that make "the internet" (cryptocurrency) useful for "the normies" (later adopters).

That's a lie people tell themselves to justify Ethereum's platform.

The reality is that I can build scalable L1 dapps on Algorand that "normal" users can use at extremely low cost.

The cost of having nobody else on the network your app is using is arguably pretty high.

That's a good argument if you're a short-sighted business looking for short term profits.

As a dev however, that sounds foolish to me.

Also, chains like Algorand or Cosmos don't have "nobody else on the network".

To the multiplier that is ETH numbers in comparison? Effectively nobody.

Exactly. This is admitting that Ethereum is not designed to scale at all for anything on-chain such that it needs half-baked "Layer 2" contraption like Polygon, zkEVM, zkSync, Optimism, etc to be remotely useful for people who are not millionaires wasting >$100k in fees to send $100.

Even so. If the service is not on a layer 2, then you have go through the bridging process of moving your ETH to and from layers which is more complicated than directly using a layer 1 blockchain.

These 'solutions' are telling everyone that Ethereum is never going to fix these issues and the duck-taped layer 2 contraptions are now making it even harder for 'normies' to just 'use it'.

It is designed to be secure at scale. Not much else is doing that over a long period, yet.

Which popular alternatives to ETH are /technically/ insecure according to you?