Vitalik Buterin is signaling a serious reframing of Ethereum’s layer-2 narrative: not the demise of rollups, however the finish of the concept that L2s are shards whose major job is scaling the community. With L1 charges now low and fuel restrict projected to rise sharply in 2026, he argues the rollup-centric roadmap’s authentic premise not suits the truth on the bottom.
Buterin opened his X publish on Feb. 3 by pointing to 2 pressures which were constructing in parallel: L2s have moved to “stage 2” much more slowly than anticipated, and Ethereum mainnet is scaling in its personal proper. In his telling, these developments break the outdated psychological mannequin in each instructions.
“Ethereum must scale,” he wrote, recapping what he framed as the unique thesis. “The definition of ‘Ethereum scaling’ is the existence of enormous portions of block house that’s backed by the complete religion and credit score of Ethereum… block house the place, when you do issues (together with with ETH) inside that block house, your actions are assured to be legitimate, uncensored, unreverted, untouched, so long as Ethereum itself capabilities. In case you create a 10000 TPS EVM the place its connection to L1 is mediated by a multisig bridge, then you aren’t scaling Ethereum.”
The punchline is blunt: “This imaginative and prescient not is sensible.” Buterin says L1 doesn’t want L2s to function “branded shards” if base-layer capability is increasing, and he’s more and more skeptical that many L2s both can or wish to meet the safety and management expectations that label implies. He pointed to at the least one L2 that, in his phrases, “could by no means wish to transcend stage 1,” citing not solely technical considerations round ZK-EVM security but additionally customer-driven regulatory necessities that “require them to have final management.”
Ethereum Layer-2’s Want To Change
That’s not offered as an indictment a lot as a categorization shift. If an L2 retains final management, it could nonetheless be a sound product for its customers, Buterin advised, nevertheless it shouldn’t be marketed as “scaling Ethereum” within the strict sense envisioned by the rollup-centric roadmap. In that context, he argues, “we should always cease interested by L2s as actually being ‘branded shards’, with the social standing and duties that this entails.”
As a substitute, he sketches a spectrum mannequin: some L2s could be tightly backed by ETH’s safety ensures, whereas others could be looser and extra elective relying on person wants. That spectrum framing implicitly makes room for app-specific chains, totally different belief fashions, and non-EVM environments—with out forcing them right into a single “rollup as shard” storyline.
For L2 groups, Buterin’s steerage is simple: cease anchoring your id on scaling alone. In case you’re dealing with ETH or Ethereum-issued belongings, he argues “stage 1 on the minimal” issues; in any other case, you’re successfully working as “only a separate L1 with a bridge.” The true differentiator, in his view, ought to be options and properties {that a} bigger L1 nonetheless received’t present—whether or not that’s specialised execution environments, privateness, sequencing traits like ultra-low latency, or non-financial use instances.
Buterin says he’s develop into “extra satisfied of the worth of the native rollup precompile,” particularly as soon as Ethereum has enshrined the ZK-EVM proof verification it “want[s] anyway to scale L1.” The thought is a protocol-level precompile that verifies ZK-EVM proofs and is handled as a part of Ethereum itself, which means it will “auto-upgrade together with Ethereum,” and if it shipped with a bug, “Ethereum will hard-fork to repair the bug.”
That final level is the subtext: he desires a path the place trustless verification and interoperability are simpler to attain and not using a “safety council,” and the place rollups can add customized options whereas nonetheless anchoring their EVM correctness on to Ethereum. He additionally tied this route to the prospect of synchronous composability: transactions that may safely span L1 and L2 liquidity with tight coupling, referencing ongoing analysis on combining preconfirmations with based mostly rollups and real-time proving.
Buterin’s conclusion leaves room for uncomfortable outcomes. A permissionless ecosystem will produce chains with “trust-dependent, or backdoored, or in any other case insecure” parts, he wrote, calling that “unavoidable.” The job, as he frames it, is to make ensures legible to customers whereas strengthening Ethereum’s base layer, suggesting that the following part of L2 competitors could also be much less about who “scales Ethereum,” and extra about who can credibly outline, and show, what they’re truly providing.
At press time, ETH traded at $2,256.
Featured picture from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
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