The L2 DAO formed on the back of the MolochDAO project which looked to create a community in the name of advancing ETH 2.0. In compliment to this effort, individuals within the blockchain ecosystem have come together to put funds toward appreciating and advancing efforts in the off-chain tx and computation space available today. This DAO idea was incepted during Devcon V in Osaka, Japan.
With the emergence of DAO communities there's been an awesome advancement for development of specific initiatives. MolochDAO provided an amazing shining light for the ecosystem to rally for the development of ETH 2.0, and expanded to the broader ecosystem.
The state of L2 development today includes a wide variety of designs to parse through as a developer. Some, Connext, have been out in the wild for more than a year. Others, Optimistic Rollups and the OVM, are just getting started with their development. Today, there are both tokenized and non-tokenized second layer solutions available. Similar components make up each of these architectures, yet there has been little to no cross analysis of the features and tradeoffs offered by each of these implementations. This is what the L2DAO community aims to first foster.
First phase of this project aims to assess each of the scaling options under a defined criteria from both a devEx and UX perspective. This will provide for a stronger base understanding of the L2 landscape, in turn helping developers navigate the many different options. To begin, the group will find support through grants via entities such as MolochDAO, the Ethereum Foundation, or other second layer token projects. Eventually, if a critical mass forms, the community may decide to DAOify under one of the available resource management frameworks.