Optimism might make L2 history here.

They're testing paid priority access for transactions.
Today every tx competes in a priority gas auction.
Pay more, get in sooner.
The problem Optimism wants to solve is that this creates spam and gas wars, and traders and market makers can't show commitment beyond gas price.
Although this will probably mostly incentivize sandwich attackooors (MEV bots) to stake. Kinda smart.
So you can stake 100k OP ($13k USD) and get top-of-block access.
- No lockups
- instant unstaking
- time multiplier prevents quick OP borrowing to frontrun liquidations, you need to hold 15+ days for full boost
Phase 1 is first come first served.
Phase 2 your stake size, duration, and priority gas creates a single ordering score.
This probably first L2 token utility that goes beyond fee revenue (which L2s don't have anyway).
plus,
Although I wonder if this doesn't end up as sequencer centralization? Because staked sequencer is better than the others.
In any case, decentralization is luxury after Base left OP Stack. It was a big hit so $OP needs a real utility narrative and staking is one.
Still on testnet, but I welcome innovation in tokenomics. It has been lacking.
It seems hard times finally push that innovation.