Over the past few days, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a long post that triggered an unusually honest discussion about the future of Layer 2 blockchains.
The original idea behind L2s was relatively straightforward. Ethereum needed to scale, and L2s were meant to act as “branded shards” — environments where activity would inherit Ethereum’s security guarantees while offering cheaper and faster execution. In theory, this allowed Ethereum to scale without compromising decentralization.
In practice, two things happened.
First, progress toward full decentralization of L2s (often referred to as Stage 2) turned out to be far slower and more difficult than expected. In some cases, teams openly admitted that they may never reach that stage, not just for technical reasons, but because their users or regulators require centralized control.
Second, Ethereum itself began scaling faster than many anticipated. Fees are already significantly lower than in previous cycles, and further gas limit increases are planned over the next few years. This undermines the idea that L2s are needed as permanent “extensions” of Ethereum purely for cost reasons.
Vitalik’s conclusion is not that L2s are useless. Rather, he argues that the original framing no longer makes sense. If an L2 cannot or does not want to provide strong Ethereum-level guarantees, it should not present itself as “Ethereum scaling.” Instead, L2s should be viewed as a spectrum of systems with different trust assumptions and goals.
What makes this discussion interesting is that many L2 teams already behave this way in practice. Some focus on privacy or specialized virtual machines, others on application-specific execution, and some openly trade decentralization for UX, speed, or regulatory compatibility. Calling all of these “Ethereum scaling solutions” arguably creates more confusion than clarity.
From a broader perspective, this raises a larger infrastructure question that goes beyond Ethereum itself. If base layers can scale enough for most financial use cases, does the ecosystem naturally move toward specialization rather than generic scaling layers? Do we end up with fewer “universal” chains and more purpose-built systems?
This debate has already spread beyond Ethereum. Developers and leaders from ZK ecosystems, alternative L1s, and app-focused chains have reacted, often agreeing on the diagnosis while disagreeing on what comes next. The common theme is that infrastructure is maturing, and simplistic narratives are breaking down.
For those interested in deeper context, these two long-form breakdowns helped clarify the discussion and the range of reactions across ecosystems:
– Vitalik’s reframing of the original role of L2s and what replaces it:
https://btcusa.com/vitalik-buterin-why-the-original-need-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains-is-fading/– How Ethereum developers, ZK teams, Solana, ICP, and app-focused chains responded to this shift:
https://btcusa.com/beyond-ethereum-how-crypto-leaders-are-rethinking-l2s-after-vitaliks-statement/Curious how long-time participants here see it. Does L1 scaling eventually reduce the need for most L2s, or do L2s survive primarily as specialized infrastructure rather than generic scaling layers?
