An L2 settles to a base chain and often pays its fees in the base chain’s asset. So a busy network can generate substantial activity while its own token captures little or none of it directly.
That makes value accrual the first question about any L2 token, and the answer is not the same across them.
Three possible relationships
Governance only. The token votes and does not receive fees. Its value rests on the expectation that governance rights over a valuable network are worth something — a weaker and more reflexive claim than a cash flow.
Fee capture. Some designs route revenue to the token through burns or distributions, which makes it closer to HYPE or BNB — a claim on a business.
Staking or sequencing. The token secures or orders the network and earns for doing so, which is closer to an L1’s structure.
These are genuinely different assets wearing the same category label, and a comparison across them that ignores which is which is comparing incomparable things.
The supply overhang
L2 tokens typically launched with large locked allocations, so unlocks are a recurring feature of the family — and the relevant test is unlock size against depth, not against market capitalisation.
Reading them
No options book, so the leverage layer for positioning. And on-chain depth matters more than usual: many of these tokens have their most meaningful liquidity on the very network they represent, so the on-chain read is not optional context but the main one.
The honest summary: the category name says how the network works and almost nothing about what the token is. Read the accrual mechanism before anything else.