BlockBeats News, February 4th, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin posted, stating that with the significant increase in Ethereum main chain (L1) scaling and Gas limit plans, the Layer 2 (L2) originally envisioned as “rollups as a scaling strategy” is no longer necessary. L2 cannot fully deliver “rollups as a scaling strategy” features, and some projects may even permanently stay in phase 1 to meet customer compliance requirements. Therefore, L2 should be repositioned to no longer just pursue scaling but to provide unique additional functionality such as a privacy-focused virtual machine, application-specific efficiency, extreme scaling, social/identity/AI and other non-financial applications design, as well as low latency or built-in oracles.
The Ethereum community’s reaction to Vitalik’s L2 perspective is somewhat divided. On the one hand, some users agree with his shift, believing that the L2 narrative is an attempt to mask the shortcomings of L1 scaling, emphasizing that L1’s progress has made L2 redundant. They also point out that L2 is often centralized, has fragmented liquidity, and introduces additional risks, far from being a true “trustless scaling.” Among them, Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams said, “This is the ‘inflection point,’ glad someone said it. A strong ETH depends on a strong L1.” In addition, The Block founder Mike Dudas said, “I was ahead of Vitalik on this issue by 3 years; glad we’re finally admitting it.”
On the other hand, some users in the Ethereum community are concerned that this may undermine confidence and funding for L2 projects, leading to community fragmentation. They believe that L2 can still provide value, especially in specific use cases (such as high-throughput applications). In the Chinese community, the notion of “Vitalik giving up on the L2 path” is widely circulated, but a more accurate understanding is: it’s not about giving up but redefining.
Paradigm Partner Dan Robinson said, “Ethereum L1 has indeed made progress in increasing throughput, but I believe its scaling roadmap is far from aggressive enough in reducing latency and addressing MEV. As long as L1 doesn’t have a clear roadmap to reduce block time to less than 6 seconds or replace the current PBS-based block construction auction mechanism, there is still a huge opportunity and a complementary space for L2 to play.” In addition, Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer said, “We’ve been saying this for years and have developed technology that is years ahead of other projects.”
