Mods, can we get a mega thread on gas fees?

There seems to be a lot of interest about gas fees in this subreddit, which is pretty understandable. However, it is affecting the quality of posts here.

Mods, could we please consolidate the gas fee discussions into one mega-thread? I would propose banning all gas fee discussion outside of that thread.

We can even use that same thread to educate users about the current situation.

A few things that come to mind that are often repeated:

1. Gas fees are high because usage is high.
2. This is not easily solvable by other blockchains, due to the blockchain trilemma.
3. This is not solved by EIP-1559. EIP-1559 solves other problems
4. This will not be solved by ''ETH 2.0", ETH2 is the change from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake.
5. This *will be solved by Layer 2. Lots of people are working on solutions. (See below)
6. In the future, data shards will significantly decrease fees on these solutions, but not on L1.
7. Gas fees are not at 1000 gwei all the time, as some screenshots might suggest. You can see the historic average gas price on gasnow.org

The end goal of Ethereum is for users to do almost all their transactions on Layer 2 solutions. You''ll be able to buy some ETH on Coinbase, send it through Optimism or Arbitrum to something like Hop where you'll be able to hop on to immutable to buy an NFT, which you'll be able to move to another L2 where you can use it as collateral for a loan.

Examples of Layer 2 solutions are:

• Optimism - Already usable in alpha phase
• Arbitrum - Coming within the next few days
• dYdX, Using Starkware - One of the first, already usable perpetual trading platform.
• Immutable X - Already usable, NFT market (focus on games)
• Hermez
• Aztec
• ZKSync
• Loopring