Vitalik Buterin has made it clear in a recent post that only Stage 1+ rollups will matter from next year. While Buterin says that his focus will shift to Layer 2 solutions with at least Stage 1 maturity, the community has been arguing about the role of L2s.
In a 2020 post, the Ethereum co-founder said that he sees the L2 roll-ups adding to the base layer in the long run for scalability. Some commentators believe that this creates a conflict for users.
Buterin shifts focus to Stage 1+ rollups.
Vitalik Buterin seems serious about Layer 2 scaling solutions but says the focus remains on Stage 1 and above networks. In a post on X, he said, “It doesn’t matter if I invested, or if you’re my friend; stage 1 or bust.” Stages are divided based on rollups’ maturity and features. Some Stage 1 features include a proof system, governance, decentralization, and security thresholds. Notably, zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups reduce the burden on the base blockchain by combining multiple transactions into a single proof. Optimistic Rollups focus on posting transactions in batches to the main chain while disputing invalid ones.
Buterin says that he will publicly mention L2s that have reached at least Stage 1 with some grace period for interesting projects. The Ethereum co-founder specifies that the Stage 1 governance threshold represents 75% of council. This essentially means that major decisions, like overriding proof systems, require 75% consensus. He further adds that the condition includes at least 26% of the council being independent of the core development team, reducing failures. Buterin’s comments come years after he released a roll-up centric roadmap for Ethereum. In the post from October 2020, he shared that the long-term goal is to remain rollup-centric as they offer greater scalability than L1 base-layer improvements alone.
That said, the Ethereum co-founder also reiterates that “glorified multisigs” will soon cease to exit. What he means is that centralized setups through multiple signatures for security will be taken over by cryptographic trust.
This comes after Buterin cashed out 760 ETH from his multi-sig wallet. He explained that it was an automatic sale from previously set up order from a time-weighted average price (TWAP) order. Vitalik Buterin added in his post that the industry needs to adhere to stricter standards. He added, “One path toward doing this safely is to use multiple prover implementations.”
Ethereum community disagrees on the role of L2s
According to L2 Beat data, the total value locked (TVL) across various Layer 2 projects on Ethereum amounts to $33.7 billion at press time. The group has grown by over 200% growth in one year. The platform lists 74 active Layer 2 projects and 22 Layer 3 projects. Arbitrum One at Stage 1 tops the list in terms of TVL at $13.2 billion. Base stands at Stage 0 despite a TVL of $6 billion at the second spot.
The TVL of Ethereum L2s | Source: L2Beat
Amid this, the industry is arguing if L2s are actually competing with L1s.Max Resnick. Engineer with Special Mechanisms Group is of the view that they are actually competing for users. Steven Goldfeder, the co-founder of Offchain Labs, disagrees and argues that the both work in sync for scalability.
Goldfeder added, “If Ethereum reaches its potential we’ll have plenty of demand to fully saturate L1 and multiple L2s/L3s.” In response, Buterin compares modern web browsers to operating systems (OS). He explains that today’s browsers are complex and run almost all applications, including some offline ones.
