Overview
- Arguing that Ethereum’s base layer is scaling and many rollups have stalled on decentralization, Buterin said the original plan that treated L2s as branded shards no longer makes sense.
- He warned that high‑throughput chains linked by multisig bridges are not truly scaling Ethereum because they do not inherit full L1 security guarantees.
- Buterin reframed L2s as a spectrum with clear trust models, pressed for at least Stage 1 maturity when handling ETH or Ethereum assets, and backed protocol work on native rollups and ZK‑EVM verification precompiles.
- On-chain data shows rollups processing roughly 3,470 user operations per second even as total value secured has fallen about 13% year over year to $40.3 billion, indicating heavier use for cheap execution than for storing large capital.
- L2 teams quickly shifted their messaging—Arbitrum’s Steven Goldfeder said “Arbitrum is not Ethereum” and Base’s Jesse Pollak said L2s must offer more than lower fees—while Coinbase-backed Base drew scrutiny for centralized sequencing despite dominating sector revenue in 2025.