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Ethereum’s 2025 interoperability work did not deliver one universal system for moving assets and actions between Arbitrum, Base, Scroll, Linea, and other Layer 2 networks. It advanced a portfolio of approaches instead: modular intent infrastructure, a separate wallet-centric proposal, shared messaging and address standards, and research into faster confirmation and settlement. For users, the practical lesson is that a common interface or roadmap does not by itself remove bridge, relayer, solver, or contract-specific trust assumptions.
What the Ethereum Foundation set out to improve
In its Protocol Update 003, published August 29, 2025, the Ethereum Foundation placed interoperability under “Improve UX.” Its stated mission was a “Seamless, secure and permissionless experience across the Ethereum ecosystem, for individuals and institutions.” The near-term focus was intent-based architecture and general message passing, with the goals of lowering latency and cost while improving security and trustlessness.
The program described three workstreams:
- Initialisation: develop modular intents and common standards for moving assets and messages.
- Acceleration: improve the time to inclusion, confirmation, finality, and settlement.
- Finalisation: explore fast finality and real-time proving to support fast, permissionless messaging.
These are roadmap goals, not a claim that every Ethereum L2 had already gained fast, trust-minimized interoperability.
How the Foundation proposed measuring progress
The August update named five measures: signatures per operation, time-to-inclusion, time-to-fast-confirmation, time-to-finality, and time-to-L2-settlement. These are useful questions to ask when comparing an actual cross-chain flow: how much must a user sign, and how long until each stage is complete?
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The cited Foundation updates do not report numeric 2025 results for L2 interoperability adoption, latency, cost reductions, or security improvements. The five measures describe an evaluation agenda, not published performance data.
OIF and EIL take different approaches
Two of the program’s most visible approaches address cross-chain actions differently. The Open Intents Framework (OIF) organizes intent-based infrastructure into modular parts. The Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL), presented later by the Ethereum Foundation Account Abstraction team, proposes a wallet-centric way to specify and execute actions.
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| Approach | How it is framed | What the 2025 material establishes |
|---|---|---|
| Open Intents Framework (OIF) | Modular components for intent origination, fulfillment, settlement, and rebalancing. Teams can combine or replace components to fit different L2 requirements and security assumptions. | The August update reported production-ready smart-contract implementations live and forecast an open-source reference solver and cross-chain validation module for Q4 2025. The Foundation’s February 18, 2026 retrospective later said OIF reached production during 2025; that does not establish that every integration, solver, or chain works identically. |
| Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) | A wallet-centric, ERC-4337-based proposal in which users sign and execute cross-L2 actions through their wallets. It specifies calls to execute; an intent instead expresses the outcome a user wants. | The Account Abstraction team described EIL as a proposal in a November 18, 2025 post. Its aim to avoid reliance on relayers or solvers is a design claim, not evidence of a universally deployed layer or independently demonstrated trust guarantee. |
The EIL post used the title phrase “Making Ethereum Feel Like One Chain Again,” but that was an aspiration, not a verified user outcome. Its disclaimer also says the proposal may not represent consensus views across the Ethereum Foundation.
What the standards cover—and what they do not
The August update grouped standards across the user-facing and infrastructure layers:
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- ERC-7828 and ERC-7930: interoperable addresses.
- ERC-7811: asset consolidation.
- ERC-5792: multicalls for wallet and application user experience.
- ERC-7683: cross-chain intents.
- ERC-7786: a common cross-chain messaging interface.
The Foundation’s February 2026 retrospective said ERC-7930 and ERC-7828, along with ERC-7888 (Crosschain Broadcaster), moved forward in 2025. This is not a statement that every proposal in the list reached final status or was adopted across wallets, applications, and chains.
ERC-7786 is an interface, not a security guarantee
The ERC-7786 specification describes a common interface and workflow for contract-to-contract messaging, including compatibility beyond EVM chains and adapters for existing protocols. A common API can make it easier for applications to work across messaging systems, but it does not make the underlying route secure or trustless by itself. Implementations and relaying arrangements still matter.
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The specification warns that a centralized relayer can fail and halt a protocol. It says relaying should be decentralized or permissionless to support liveness. That warning is important when evaluating whether an intermediary can delay or block a message; a standard alone does not answer who operates the relayer or what happens if it stops.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to evaluate a real cross-L2 route
If you are considering a route such as Arbitrum → Base → Scroll → Linea, assess the actual wallet, application, bridge, and contracts involved—not just whether they use the word “interoperable.” The Foundation’s named performance measures cover signatures and timing. Cost, trust and security, censorship resistance, privacy, and portability are also relevant evaluation questions based on the program’s stated concerns.
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- User effort: How many signatures and separate actions are required for the operation?
- Timing: How long does inclusion take, and when does the route provide fast confirmation, finality, and L2 settlement?
- Cost: What fees or other costs arise during initiation, fulfillment, settlement, and rebalancing?
- Trust and verification: Which contracts, validators, relayers, solvers, or proofs are involved, and what can be verified on-chain?
- Censorship resistance and privacy: Can an intermediary delay, block, or observe the user’s action?
- Portability: Does a wallet or application use a common interface, or must it integrate separately with each chain and protocol?
The answers depend on the particular integration. The 2025 roadmap and standards do not establish that users can move tokens across every named L2 in one operation, without a third party, or with identical security guarantees.
What had advanced by the end of 2025
The clearest retrospective status comes from the Ethereum Foundation’s Protocol Priorities Update for 2026, published February 18, 2026: it says OIF reached production during 2025 and that several standards moved forward. The update describes continued work toward trust-minimized cross-L2 interactions. EIL, by contrast, is described in the cited November material as a team proposal. Together, these updates show meaningful progress across infrastructure and standards, not completion of a single universal interoperability system.
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