L2Focused

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Tuesday that the network must find “a new path” involving less dependence on layer-2 scaling networks, also known as L2s.

“The original vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense,” Buterin wrote in an X post.

For years, Ethereum developers have pursued a long-term goal of “scaling” the network, which would effectively mean creating enough available block space to allow all manner of applications and transactions to flow on the network, without sacrificing its security, efficiency, and decentralization.

Many in the Ethereum community, including Buterin, previously said this goal would best be achieved via layer-2 networks, such as Base, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism, which are built on top of the Ethereum mainnet by third-parties.

But Buterin has now changed his tune, arguing that the Ethereum mainnet is currently scaling at sufficient speed—and further, that some L2s can’t be trusted to live up to Ethereum’s standards, and thus should not be considered “branded” shards of the network, particularly when it comes to sufficient decentralization.

“L2s are not able or willing to satisfy the properties that a true ‘branded shard’ would require,” the Ethereum co-founder said. “I’ve even seen at least one explicitly saying that they may never want to go beyond stage 1, not just for technical reasons around ZK-EVM safety, but also because their customers’ regulatory needs require them to have ultimate control.”

As Buterin first laid out in 2022, “stage 1” L2s are those with “limited training wheels” when it comes to security and decentralization, while “stage 2” networks are fully decentralized.

Buterin proposed Tuesday that consumers and developers should start to think of L2s less as an extension of Ethereum in all cases, and more as a spectrum: in which some networks are considered up to Ethereum’s standards, and some aren’t, because they offer users another perk or benefit at the expense of security or decentralization.

The announcement could prove to be a watershed moment for the world of L2 development and marketing. For years, most networks building on Ethereum have honed their pitch around “scaling Ethereum”. Now, Buterin says, leaning on that framing will no longer suffice.

“What would I do today if I were an L2?” the software developer posited. “Identify a value-add other than ‘scaling.’”