I believe the zk provers will only be for L2s. The base layer will always be the way it is now. The base layer will be settlement for various shards, as it is now for Arbitrum and Optimism.
It’s like saying the internet needs more energy to run when a new application is developed. No, the internet is the same, it’s the application that now needs energy. So while the total energy the internet uses has increased, it did not increase the total required for the internet to exist itself.