Vitalik Buterin is signaling a major reorganization of Ethereum’s layer 2 narrative. This means not the end of rollups, but the end of the idea that L2 is a shard whose primary job is network scaling. He argues that with L1 fees currently low and gas limits expected to increase rapidly in 2026, the original premise of the rollup-centric roadmap no longer fits the reality on the ground.
Buterin opened his X post on February 3 by pointing out two pressures that have been building simultaneously. L2 has moved into “Phase 2” much more slowly than expected, and the Ethereum mainnet is scaling on its own. In his words, this tendency breaks old mental models in both directions.
“Ethereum needs to scale,” he wrote, summarizing how he framed his original thesis. “The definition of ‘Ethereum scaling’ is that there exists a large block space backed by the full trust and credit of Ethereum… When you perform operations (including ETH) within that block space, your activity is valid, uncensored, non-reversible, and untouched as long as Ethereum itself operates on that block space. Creating a 10000 TPS EVM whose connection to the L1 is mediated by a multi-signature bridge will not scale Ethereum.”
The point is blunt. “This vision no longer makes sense.” Buterin says that as base tier capacity scales, L1s no longer need L2s to act as “branded shards,” and many are increasingly skeptical that L2s can or want to meet the security and control expectations implied by the label. He pointed to at least one L2 that “may not want to go beyond step 1,” citing customer-centric regulatory requirements that “demand ultimate control” as well as technical concerns about ZK-EVM safety.
The need for change in Ethereum Layer-2
It is not presented as an indictment so much as a change in classification. If L2 retains ultimate control, it may still be a valid product for users, but it shouldn’t be marketed as an “extension of Ethereum” in the strict sense envisioned in the rollup-centric roadmap, Buterin suggested. In that context, he argues, “we need to stop thinking that L2 is literally a ‘brand shard’ and that it has the social status and responsibilities that come with it.”
Instead, he describes a spectral model. Some L2s may be tightly backed by ETH’s security guarantees, while others may be more loosely and selectively supported depending on user needs. This framing of the spectrum implicitly makes room for per-app chains, different trust models, and non-EVM environments without forcing a single “roll up to shards” storyline.
For L2 teams, Buterin’s guidance is simple: Don’t fix ID by extension alone. When dealing with ETH or Ethereum issued assets, “at least step one” is important, he argues. Otherwise it would effectively act as a “separate L1 with a bridge”. In his view, the real differentiators should be features and attributes that the larger L1 does not yet offer, such as specialized execution environments, privacy, sequencing characteristics such as ultra-low latency, and non-financial use cases.
“I have become more convinced of the value of native rollup precompilation,” Buterin said. Especially once Ethereum includes ZK-EVM proof verification, “L1 needs to be extended anyway”. The idea is to verify ZK-EVM proofs and protocol-level pre-compilation, which is processed as part of Ethereum itself. That means it will “automatically upgrade with Ethereum,” and if there are bugs, “Ethereum will hardfork to fix the bugs.”
The final point is subtext. He wants a path where trustless verification and interoperability can be more easily achieved without a “security council” and where rollups can lock EVM correctness directly into Ethereum while adding custom functionality. He also linked this direction to synchronous composability, i.e. transactions that can safely scale L1 and L2 liquidity with tight coupling, and referred to ongoing research on how to combine pre-confirmation with base roll-up and real-time proof.
Buterin’s conclusion leaves room for uncomfortable consequences. A permissionless ecosystem will create chains with elements that “rely on trust, have backdoors, or are insecure,” he wrote, and this “cannot be avoided.” The mission he frames is to make endorsements readable to users while strengthening Ethereum’s base layer. This suggests that the next phase of L2 competition may not be about who “scales Ethereum,” but rather about who can credibly define and prove what they actually deliver.
At press time, ETH was trading at $2,256.
Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
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