Vitalik Buterin issues a blunt reality check to the biggest crypto networks
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the role of layer-2 networks needs to be reconsidered as Ethereum’s main network continues to scale and transaction costs remain low.
In a post on X, Buterin said the original rollup-centric roadmap, which positioned layer-2s as the primary way Ethereum would scale, “no longer makes sense.” That roadmap envisioned layer-2s as secure extensions of Ethereum that would handle most transactions while inheriting Ethereum’s security guarantees, often described as “branded shards” of the network.
Layer 2s, such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Base, are offchain networks built on top of primary blockchains (Layer 1s) like Ethereum. The main purpose of these is to increase transaction speed and reduce…
