Hear me out - we could even call them... databases

what advantages, if any, does an L3 have over a standard database?

some technical ones like authentication, an evm and some template contracts like a bridge. If you used a real db, you'd have to run a vm on a server and send funds to an EOA to "bridge", etc

but most important thing is people will want to buy your token and will mark up your valuation because you have a "chain"

i appreciate that  :-)

onchain as a place is very abstract, too

it seems to me that moving a subculture onto a shared, open source database is an interesting design space 

aside from speculation, what do you think are the drawbacks?

i hear you on the first point, disclaimers are important 

on cheap blockspace, i don't think i agree

for instance, i want to subsidize gas fees, and i can't do that sustainably on any existing l2s rn

it does beg the question of why build onchain, but i see it as a long onboarding process

obfuscation about the technology - most of the L3s right now are centralized, and teams are not doing a good job of disclaiming the trust assumptions

there's also the issue of more fragmentation. We really don't need more chains, there is plenty of cheap blockspace already