Best Layer 2 Protocols in the USA of 2025

Meter

Decentralized Finance Labs

Meter is a high performance infrastructure that allows smart contracts to scale and travel seamlessly through heterogeneous blockchain networks. Meter is a Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchain protocol. The Meter system consists of two tokens: MTRG, the governance token (eMTRG is the ERC20 version), and MTR, the low-volatility currency token. Financial assets should flow freely among blockchains. Meter’s HotStuff-based consensus allows 1000s of validator nodes, making Meter the most decentralized Layer 2 for Ethereum. Meter processes thousands of transactions per second and transactions are confirmed almost instantly. Meter Passport allows assets and smart contracts travel and communicate across heterogeneous blockchains for the best price, liquidity and yield. Meter is an Ethereum Compatible with unique enhancements. Unlike other Layer 2, DEXes build on Meter are front running/MEV resistant, fast and uncensorable.

1 Rating

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Loopring

Loopring is an open protocol for building scalable non-custodial exchanges on Ethereum. Leveraging zero-knowledge proofs (zkRollup), it allows for high performance trading (high throughput, low settlement cost), without sacrificing Ethereum-level security guarantees. Users always maintain 100% control of their assets throughout the trade lifecycle. You can trade on Loopring to test it out. Loopring is an open-sourced, audited, and non-custodial exchange protocol, which means nobody in the Loopring ecosystem needs to trust others. Cryptoassets are always under users' own control, with 100% Ethereum-level security guarantees. Loopring powers highly scalable decentralized exchanges by batch-processing thousands of requests off-chain, with verifiably correct execution via ZKPs. The performance of underlying blockchains is no longer the bottleneck. Loopring performs most operations, including order-matching and trade settlement, off the Ethereum blockchain.

2 Ratings

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Syscoin

An open source community dedicated to scaling Bitcoin, especially its proof-of-work security, to meet global needs and emerging use cases, while sticking as close as possible to Bitcoin's original ideals. Syscoin's evolution across ten years of main net and the foresight reflected in its design means the project has a head-start providing a comprehensive network and protocol for projects aiming to achieve Bitcoin L2. Syscoin is a mainnet Bitcoin L2 that provides a data availability protocol that scales, making EVM and AltVM rollups on Bitcoin a reality. Merge-mined by a majority of Bitcoin's hash rate, Syscoin anchors rollups to Bitcoin's own proof-of-work and works with rollups’ existing sequencer architectures. Syscoin provides Bitcoin with a scalable data availability layer which is necessary for rollups (and other EVM or AltVM layers) to tap into Bitcoin's network in a safe and scalable way.

Starting Price: Free

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Polkadot

Polkadot is a blockchain network being built to enable Web 3.0, a decentralized and fair internet where users control their own data and markets prosper from network efficiency and security. Polkadot was founded in 2016 by Gavin Wood, former Co-Founder and CTO of Ethereum. Polkadot’s technology addresses the major issues that have stymied blockchain adoption in recent years. Polkadot’s software development toolkit, Substrate, created by Parity Technologies, makes it easy for blockchain developers to build their own custom, fit-for-use blockchains. Polkadot also enables multiple blockchains to communicate between each other, allows for easy upgradeability, and introduces “shared security”, a plug-and-play network security model that allows developers to focus on the technology and avoid spending time and resources recruiting a set of operators to run a new blockchain.

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Liquidity Network

Liquidity is a significantly better account to manage your money and crypto coins better, wherever you are, whoever you are. Unlike banks, we can't freeze your money, we speak to our customers like humans, we don’t add hidden fees and we put technology and research at the heart of everything we do. User security is the priority, users are always in control of their funds. Liquidity Network's transaction throughput is not bound by the blockchain. Liquidity Network enables gasless transfers and swaps. Intuitive API for developers to build usable dApps. Based on peer-reviewed research, our work is publicly available, to introduce a secure and scalable solution to the community. Liquidity Network's smart contracts are completely open-source under GNU General Public License v3.0. LQD is the main utility token used to pay for Liquidity Network’s services. Think instant transfers, direct spending notifications, swapping cryptocurrencies and an easy way to spend and send to friends.

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Base

Coinbase

Base is a secure, low-cost, developer-friendly Ethereum L2 built to bring the next billion users to web3. Base is built with the security and scalability you need to power your dapps. It leverages the underlying security of Ethereum and lets you confidently onramp into Base from Coinbase, Ethereum L1, and other interoperable chains. Get the EVM environment at a fraction of the cost. Get early access to Ethereum features like Account Abstraction (ERC4337), simple developer APIs for gasless transactions, and smart contract wallets. Base is built on Optimism’s open-source OP Stack. Base is the easy way for decentralized apps to leverage Coinbase’s products and distribution. Seamless Coinbase integrations, easy fiat onramps, and access to the Coinbase ecosystem, which has 110M verified users and $80B assets on platform.

Starting Price: Free

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COMBO Network

COMBO is a leading provider of scaling solutions for Web3 game development. By leveraging the world's top game engine, COMBO is building an open source, decentralized, game-oriented protocol that is accessible to everyone. It aims to maximize the potential of Web3 games by connecting game developers with the entire ecosystem in an efficient, affordable, and secure way. COMBO has built full-fledged partnerships with leading Web3 infrastructure projects to provide comprehensive development toolchains and built-in game engines. These advanced tools can help game developers to easily get into the Web3 world, and simplify and accelerate their game development process. By applying optimistic rollup, we can achieve more than 5,000 TPS while keeping the gas prices as low as 0.000000008 Gwei. COMBO has built full-fledged partnerships with leading Web3 infrastructure projects to provide comprehensive development toolchains and built-in game engines.

Starting Price: Free

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Carbon Protocol

Switcheo

Carbon is a cross-chain protocol that acts as a building block for DeFi. Carbon protocol allows anyone to bootstrap open financial markets for any asset type, on any blockchain. Carbon powers Demex, a popular, fully decentralized exchange for trading a plethora of financial instruments. Powers interoperability between blockchains like Ethereum, Cosmos, BSC, Neo and Zilliqa with true cross-chain liquidity pools through the PolyNetwork bridge. Supports any DeFi innovation with native support of crypto derivatives, Balancer-style liquidity pools, AMMs, on-chain order books and more. Custom-built using Cosmos-SDK and secured by a large network of validators through Tendermint PoS for trustless and safe transactions. Powers interoperability between blockchains like Ethereum, Cosmos, BSC, Neo and Zilliqa with true cross-chain liquidity pools through the PolyNetwork bridge.

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Liquid Network

Blockstream

Faster, more confidential Bitcoin transactions. Liquid is a sidechain-based settlement network for traders and exchanges, enabling faster, more confidential Bitcoin transactions and the issuance of digital assets. Bitcoin transfers on Liquid are fully settled within two minutes, allowing traders to move funds rapidly between exchanges and their own wallets without facing long, uncertain confirmation times. Anyone can issue new assets on Liquid, including stablecoins and security tokens. Each asset can be traded freely within the network, taking advantage of Liquid’s privacy, speed, and secure trading features. Asset types and amounts are hidden by default on the Liquid sidechain, keeping traders’ sensitive financial data secure from third parties, and preventing the front-running of large orders. Each asset on Liquid can be swapped for any other asset using the open source Liquid Swaps Tool.

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Raiden Network

The Raiden Network is an off-chain scaling solution, enabling near-instant, low-fee and scalable payments. It’s complementary to the Ethereum blockchain and works with any ERC20 compatible token. The Raiden project is work in progress. Its goal is to research state channel technology, define protocols and develop reference implementations. The Raiden Network is an infrastructure layer on top of the Ethereum blockchain. While the basic idea is simple, the underlying protocol is quite complex and the implementation non-trivial. Nonetheless the technicalities can be abstracted away, such that developers can interface with a rather simple API to build scalable decentralized applications based on the Raiden Network. The basic idea of the Raiden Network is to avoid the blockchain consensus bottleneck. This is done by leveraging a network of payment channels which allow to securely transfer value off-chain, i.e without involving the blockchain for every transfer.

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Palm

Together, with some of the biggest names in fine art, cryptoart, and entertainment, we are building a new creative studio and NFT ecosystem on Ethereum that is both scalable and sustainable. Palm NFT Studio brings projects and platforms into the Palm ecosystem by supporting and collaborating with creatives, artists, marketplaces, and rights holders. Palm is designed from the ground up to be as flexible as artists are creative. Today, we are making NFTs easier and more efficient to use with an Ethereum sidechain, and have a roadmap to transition to an Ethereum Layer 2. Creators using the Palm ecosystem will benefit from super low gas fees, and the Palm ecosystem will reward both creators and participants.

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Truebit

Truebit is a blockchain enhancement which enables smart contracts to securely perform complex computations in standard programming languages at reduced gas costs. While smart contracts can perform small computations correctly, large computation tasks pose security risks for blockchains. Truebit counteracts this shortcoming via a trustless, retrofitting oracle which correctly performs computational tasks. Any smart contract can issue a computation task to this oracle in the form of WebAssembly bytecode, while anonymous “miners” receive rewards for correctly solving the task. The oracle’s protocol guarantees correctness in two layers: a unanimous consensus layer where anyone can object to faulty solutions, and an on-chain mechanism which incentivizes participation and ensures fair remuneration. These components formally manifest themselves through a combination of novel, off-chain architecture and on-chain smart contracts.

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SKALE

Run your dApps in a decentralized modular cloud built for real-world needs and configured for your requirements. SKALE Networks's modular protocol is one of the first of its kind to allow developers to easily provision highly configurable blockchains, which provide the benefits of decentralization without compromising on computation, storage, or security. Elastic blockchains are highly performant, decentralized, configurable, Ethereum compatible, and use the latest breakthroughs in modern cryptography to provide provable security. The standard for security in distributed systems, BFT guarantees that the network can reach consensus even when up to one third of participants are malicious. Following the same model as the Internet, this protocol recognizes latencies of nodes and the network, allowing messages to take an indefinite period of time to deliver. BLS Threshold Signatures enable efficient interchain communication and support randomness in node allocation.

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Starknet

StarkWare

Starknet is a permissionless decentralized ZK-Rollup operating as an L2 network over Ethereum, where any dApp can achieve unlimited scale for its computation, without compromising Ethereum's composability and security. Starknet achieves scale, while preserving the security of L1 Ethereum by producing STARK proofs off-chain, and verifying those proofs on-chain. On Starknet, developers can easily deploy any business logic using Starknet Contracts. Starknet will provide Ethereum-level composability, facilitating easy development and compounding innovation. The STARK Prover powers the StarkEx scalability engine, and has already demonstrated the ability to process 600K transactions in a single proof on Mainnet.

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Nervos

Early internet applications lived on segregated networks needing different ways to access and interact. Now, in today’s decentralized world we again see this segregation into different ecosystems with poor interoperability. The Nervos Network solves for this problem by offering a suite of integrated solutions that allow the developer to build Universal Apps. Choose your interface, choose your crypto and stick with it, but still access the entire space. The frustration of multiple wallets, exchanges and seed phrases is no more with Nervos. Build on Nervos and have the ability to target any Virtual Machine (VM). Port your dApp across with ease and instantly have access to the entire blockchain ecosystem. Sustainable crypto-economics with a built-in store of value mechanism to solve some of the biggest sustainability challenges for public blockchains.

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ChainX

ChainX, the earliest launched project in polkadot ecosystem, ChainX is committed to the research and application of Bitcoin layer 2 expansion, digital asset gateway and Polkadot second-layer relay chain. To realize cross-chain asset exchange, leading the new direction of Bitcoin Cross-DEFi. Bitcoin, with a market capitalization on its way to reaching US$1 Trillion, holds the key to the digital currency world. Its value proposition is enabling further and deeper blockchain technology breakthroughs, validating Bitcoin as a payment method and a superior way of transferring and storing value; in the eyes of many, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of its full potential. ChainX is deeply committed to researching and expanding Bitcoin’s Layer 2 financial platform, striving to promote Bitcoin’s value flow, enrich financial derivative opportunities and improve hedging tools.

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Celer Network

Celer

Celer Network is a layer-2 scaling platform that brings fast, secure and low-cost blockchain applications on Ethereum, Polkadot and other blockchains to mass adoption. Celer launched the world’s first Generalized State Channel Network and continues to push the frontier of layer2 scaling with advanced Rollup technology. Core applications and middlewares like cBridge, Layer2.Finance and more ecosystem applications built on Celer have attracted more large audiences in DeFi, blockchain interoperability and gaming space. Layer2.Finance tackles the two largest challenges preventing DeFi from reaching mass adoption, the extraordinarily high transaction fees and being very difficult to navigate and use. cBridge is a multi-chain network that enables instant, low-cost and ANY-to-ANY value transfers within and across Ethereum’s layer-2 chains, Ethereum main chain and in the future, other layer-1s, and layer-2 on top of those other layer-1 chains.

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StarkEx

StarkWare

StarkEx generates validity proofs, to ensure that only valid data resulting from computations performed with integrity, is committed on-chain. The secret to StarkEx’s massive scaling capabilities lies in the uneven division of computation between its off-chain prover and the on-chain verifier. StarkEx powers self-custodial dApps, and employs innovative anti-censorship mechanisms to ensure that users’ funds always remain in their custody. StarkEx has been developed to serve a diverse range of user and application needs. Applications that wish to integrate with StarkEx can arrive on Mainnet within a few weeks time, depending on the maturity of their off-chain Operator node. With validity proofs, state updates are considered finalized as soon as they are verified on-chain. This can be a matter of hours, as compared to fraud proofs that can be finalized only after the dispute period.

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Raydius

Raydius is a middleware solution designed to create a more connected blockchain ecosystem. Currently, building cross-chain applications is troublesome with various Layer 1 and Layer 2 protocols each supporting different development frameworks. Raydius solves the problem by offering the cross layer support as a service for developers so that they could focus on creating the product most needed by users. Raydius offers an EVM compatible Layer 2 PoS side chain built on Substrate and it connects to different Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains through bi-directional bridges. There are also cross-chain bridge aggregators to allow users to have a one-stop experience using dApps on different chains. Raydius bridge aggregator connects with popular asset bridges including multichain.xyz, Matic and BSC to provide the best routing for users with demand to switch assets across blockchains.

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Godwoken

Nervos Network

Godwoken is an optimistic rollup ultimately inheriting security from Layer 1. Godwoken provides instant transaction finality with low fees and a completely Ethereum compatible environment on Nervos. With Nervos, Ethereum blockchain developers will be able to port dApps seamlessly, allowing them to be part of the next generation DeFi ecosystem. Godwoken in an inherently multi-chain solution utilizing advanced account abstraction that allows for flexible wallet support, or traditional user accounts, for an internet-like experience. Cross-chain assets such as ETH and ERC-20 tokens can be utilized on deployed dApps through Nervos' Force Bridge.

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Boba

Boba is a next-generation Ethereum Layer 2 Optimistic Rollup scaling solution that reduces gas fees, improves transaction throughput, and extends the capabilities of smart contracts. Boba offers fast exits backed by community-driven liquidity pools, shrinking the Optimistic Rollup exit period from seven days to only a few minutes, while giving LPs incentivized yield farming opportunities. Boba’s extensible smart contracts will enable developers across the Ethereum ecosystem to build dApps that invoke code executed on web-scale infrastructure such as AWS Lambda, making it possible to use algorithms that are either too expensive or impossible to execute on-chain. We’re building Boba in a way that puts our users and developers first. Our goal is to build a pragmatic L2 that is the first step towards opening Ethereum to the next Billion users. Join us on our mission and help grow the community.

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Aztec

The new internet of money is secured by openness, but at a high price, all your counterparties know your entire financial history. Aztec is the ultimate security shield for the internet of money, protecting user and business data on Web3.0. With cryptographic anonymity, sender and recipient identities are hidden. Transaction amounts are encrypted, making your crypto balances private. Network observers can’t even see which asset or service a transaction belongs to. Aztec is built on PLONK, the new superfast standard in universal SNARK technology, created by our world-class cryptography team. Private transactions are computed in seconds on all devices, and our rollup service saves gas and settles in minutes. Fund and manage your DeFi positions anonymously, and trade them inside the Aztec privacy shield. Program private money, escrow, money streaming, micropayments, your imagination is the limit.

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Keep Network

Keep

Stake on Ethereum’s first private computer and earn. Staking with Keep is the best way to back a truly decentralized network and the future of DeFi. Privacy-focused infrastructure for the public blockchain. The Keep network allows private data to be used on public protocols without sacrificing confidentiality. Keep is the only protocol that is truly decentralized. “Keeps” are off-chain containers that allow contracts to use private data without exposing the data to the public blockchain. The Keep network stores data with the highest level of encryption. Keep and tBTC have been audited by the strongest firms in the ecosystem. Learn more about staking on the Keep network to earn rewards and secure the network. Keep is a privacy layer that enables private data to be leveraged on public blockchains without compromising security or confidentiality. Keep is the network behind tBTC, the first secure and decentralized tokenized bitcoin on Ethereum.

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Perun

PolyCrypt

Perun is an off-chain framework that supports real-time payments as well as complex business logic and supercharges any existing blockchain. Perun connects people across multiple blockchains, allowing interoperability between different currencies and blockchain networks. Transactions are instant, energy efficient and cheap to enable massively increased throughput by applying Layer-2-Technology. Virtual channel technology can keep your transaction data private and is continually proven secure to guarantee state-of-the-art procedures. Perun supports payments over NFC and Bluetooth without an active internet connection. The first component of Perun’s off-chain framework are State Channels. State Channels allow users to execute massive amounts transactions off-chain, while the security is backed by the underlying blockchain. The soundness of our protocols has been analyzed with cutting edge methods of cryptographic research.

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Loom Network

Loom

Loom Network provides developers the scalability and usability they need to build high-performance user-facing DApps today. With seamless integrations to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Chain, and all major blockchains, deploying once to Loom lets you future-proof your DApps by reaching the largest number of users possible. Loom Network is a multichain interop platform live in production since early 2018. Optimized for scaling high-performance DApps that require a fast and smooth user experience, the network allows DApps to offer a UX comparable to traditional applications and onboard new users without the friction of needing to download crypto wallet software. This allows developers to integrate assets from all major chains, as well as build a DApp only once and offer it to users on all platforms simultaneously. The token is also used by developers to pay for DApp hosting on Loom Network. Unlike Ethereum, developers pay a flat monthly fee to host their DApps on Loom.

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Hermez

Hermez is an open-source ZK-Rollup optimized for secure, low-cost and usable token transfers on the wings of Ethereum. Hermez seamlessly integrates into the fabric of the Ethereum ecosystem and enables low-cost token transfers for an inclusive economy. Cost-efficient token transfers and swaps with high throughput. Decentralized and open-source architecture. Computational integrity for secure transactions. By using zero-knowledge technology, transfer costs are significantly reduced, allowing more accessible financial services for mainstream adoption. Computational integrity and on-chain data availability are guaranteed by zero-knowledge-proof technology while preserving the public blockchain properties of Ethereum. Hermez's mission is to create an inclusive, resilient and highly efficient payment network for the next generation of digital currencies to ensure everyone has the freedom to transact.

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Astar Network

Astar

Astar Network is a scalable and interoperable infrastructure for Web3.0. Since Astar Network is built with Parity’s Substrate framework, it can be a future Polkadot parachain that also acts as a scalable smart contract platform. The Polkadot Relaychain, by design, does not support smart contracts. This allows Astar the opportunity to fill in this gap. Scalability is obviously one of the most crucial demands dApp developers have. Ideally, the developers can build whatever applications on Astar Network without having to consider its scalability. Astar Network is an open-source project. There are a lot of opportunities to get involved in our ecosystem. Astar Network is an open-source project anyone can join, develop, and modify. Astar Network's mission is to provide a scalable, interoperable, and decentralized application platform that defines and realizes the new form of the web, Web3.0.

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ParaState

Write Ethereum-compatible smart contracts in popular programming languages, & run them much faster, on Substrate. A decentralized open source business model funded by developer treasuries on participating blockchains. All existing Ethereum smart contracts work on ParaState’s Ewasm VM (Pallet SSVM) without any change. ParaState expands the developer ecosystem by supporting 20+ programming languages to create Ethereum-compatible smart contracts. Examples include generic programming languages such as Solidity, Fe, Rust, and JavaScript, and domain-specific languages (DSLs) such as MOVE, DeepSEA, and Marlowe. Substrate-based blockchains, such as Polkadot parachains, already enjoy much higher TPS (transactions per second) than Ethereum. For a smart contract platform, compute performance is more important than TPS throughput. Try deploying smart contracts on ParaState.

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Suterusu

Millions of transactions are taking place on blockchain everyday, but people have to expose individual privacy as anyone who knows your address can read your entire financial history. Suterusu invented a trustless and universal Layer 2 privacy-protection protocol - Suter Shield delinks the sender and receiver address, and give you full protection for your transaction data via advanced cryptography. Delink Sender and Receiver address going in and out of Layer 1. Complete privacy protection for both user identities and transaction details within Layer 2. Designed and integrated an advanced ZK-ConSNARK scheme with almost constant size proof, efficient proof generation and verification.

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Trinity

Trinity Blockchain Network

As a privacy-conscious network, Trinity adopts multiple technologies to protect data security and enhance privacy protection for users. Trinity state channel allows multiple transactions to be made off-chain swiftly. Trinity protocol is entirely open-sourced, and developers are able to create their own product using the protocol. Trinity is a universal off-chain scaling solution, which aims to achieve real-time payments with low transaction fees, scalability and privacy protection for mainchain assets. Using state channel technology, Trinity will significantly increase the transaction throughput of underlying chains as well as the assets on smart contracts. TNC cross-chain converter facilitates the data and value flow between multiple chains. Trinity will be a fully autonomous and decentralized performance-enhancing network for the entire ecosystem and provides all-round support to dApps on bottom layer chains in the future.

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Best Layer 2 Protocols in the USA

Compare the Top Layer 2 Protocols in the USA as of August 2025

What are Layer 2 Protocols in the USA?

Meter

Loopring

Syscoin

Polkadot

Liquidity Network

Base

COMBO Network

Carbon Protocol

Liquid Network

Raiden Network

Palm

Truebit

SKALE

Starknet

Nervos

ChainX

Celer Network

StarkEx

Raydius

Godwoken

Boba

Aztec

Keep Network

Perun

Loom Network

Hermez

Astar Network

ParaState

Suterusu

Trinity

Best Layer 2 Protocols in the USA

Compare the Top Layer 2 Protocols in the USA as of August 2025

What are Layer 2 Protocols in the USA?

Meter

Loopring

Syscoin

Polkadot

Liquidity Network

Base

COMBO Network

Carbon Protocol

Liquid Network

Raiden Network

Palm

Truebit

SKALE

Starknet

Nervos

ChainX

Celer Network

StarkEx

Raydius

Godwoken

Boba

Aztec

Keep Network

Perun

Loom Network

Hermez

Astar Network

ParaState

Suterusu

Trinity

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