Vitalik Changes Course: Ethereum’s L2 strategy ‘makes no sense anymore’, native rollups a new weapon?

Jakarta, Pintu News – Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin sparked a new debate in the crypto community after calling Ethereum’s initial layer-2 vision “no longer reasonable”. He argued that many L2s fail to fully inherit the security of the mainnet, mainly because they still rely on centralized multisig bridges.

At the same time, Ethereum’s mainnet capacity continues to increase through protocol optimization and gas limit increases. According to him, the combination of these two facts demands a “new path” for Ethereum’s scaling architecture in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Ethereum’s Old L2 Vision Overhauled

Vitalik reminds us that L2 was originally designed as an extension of Ethereum that processes cheap transactions but remains fully secured on L1. In practice, many high-speed networks rely on multisig bridges instead, not really adding to Ethereum’s security.

He emphasized that such an L2 might increase throughput, but it is not worthy of being called “scaling Ethereum”. This criticism is mainly directed at the governance and decentralization model that is evolving slower than expected.

Instead of chasing transaction numbers per second, Vitalik encourages L2 to focus on function specialization. Examples are layers that stand out in privacy, identity, decentralized finance, social applications, or artificial intelligence integration.

With this approach, L2 is no longer just a cheap blockspace, but offers a clear value proposition over Ethereum (ETH). Some community figures, including Ryan Sean Adams, welcomed this move as a “pivot” towards a stronger L1.

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Native Rollups and Mainnet Reinforcement

In the medium term, Vitalik sees native rollups as the main backbone of the new scaling strategy. Different from traditional rollups, native rollups are integrated directly in the protocol so that they are verified by L1 validators without external bridge dependency.

The integration of zkEVM proofs in the base layer is seen as key to achieving high throughput while maintaining security. The planned increase in gas limits is also expected to increase transaction capacity per block and lower average costs for users.

This approach is in line with research proposals that target up to 10,000 transactions per second on the mainnet in about a decade. If achieved, Ethereum has a chance to maintain its position as a key infrastructure for financial applications and other crypto assets like Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP), or even speculative tokens like Pepe Coin (PEPE).

For investors, the signal is clear: long-term value lies in a design that prioritizes security and decentralization, not just instant speed. Amid competing smart contract networks, this new direction could be an important differentiator for Ethereum in the cryptocurrency market.

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Reference

• Cointelegraph. Vitalik Buterin tempers vision for ETH L2s, pushes native rollups. Accessed February 5, 2026.
• Featured Image: Bitcoin News