#我在Gate广场过新年 The Ethereum Kill Switch Moment: Why Did Vitalik Personally Cut Off the Rollup's Blood Supply?

On February 6, 2026, on-chain detectives discovered a chilling number for the entire crypto community: 16,384 ETH. This wasn't a cold wallet consolidation from a certain exchange, but "war funds" taken by Vitalik Buterin himself from a multi-signature wallet. On the same day, ENS (Ethereum Name Service), the most orthodox and obedient "child" project in the Ethereum ecosystem, suddenly announced an indefinite suspension of its L2 network development. If you're only fixated on the $600 million liquidation data or still mourning Ethereum falling below $2000, you're not only a leek (retail investor), but also a blind one. This isn't a simple market correction; it's the bloodiest "coup" in Ethereum's roadmap since The Merge. Vitalik is showing everyone through action: the past three years were not only wrong but ridiculously wrong.

The Vampire Paradise of Fiefdoms
To understand Vitalik's anger, you first need to understand what the current L2 really is.
According to the script from three years ago, Rollups should be Ethereum's moat, responsible for handling the dirty work and paying profits to L1 (Layer 1 network).
But what is the reality? The reality is that these L2s have become warlords occupying territories. Look at the current DeFi situation: liquidity is fractured like shattered glass, users cross-chain between dozens of L2s, each transfer incurs a fee, and they live in fear of bridges being hacked.
Forbes' latest report still analyzes "DeFi needs systematization," essentially saying the current experience is terrible. More critically, these L2s are issuing tokens wildly, with market caps often in the billions, but their empowerment of ETH is a joke. They drain Ethereum's traffic, turning the original Gas fees of ETH into profits for their sequencers, leaving only a bunch of extremely cheap data storage fees on the mainnet even after the 4844 upgrade. This is not "scaling"; it's clearly "parasitism."
Vitalik's withdrawal of 16,000 ETH, nominally for "funding R&D," is actually a shot across the bow of the original Rollup-Centric (centered on Rollup) approach: if this "fiefdom" situation isn't reversed, Ethereum will eventually become an empty city with only passersby and no one left behind. The deep source of the "Game of Thrones" earthquake within the Foundation is deeper than you think. Just days before Vitalik's withdrawal, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) had a covert purge. According to details leaked by The Guardian, former core developer Danny Ryan left with a plan to cater to Wall Street, while Aya Miyaguchi, once seen as a "purist," received death threats.
This is a battle of routes: one side advocates continuing to please institutions, packaging ETH as a financial product; the other side, which Vitalik now stands with, realizes that if Ethereum continues to be manipulated by capital into those hollow L2 infrastructures, it will be truly doomed. Why did ENS dare to halt L2 development at this critical juncture? Because they were the first to sense the trend.
As Ethereum's loyalists, if even they think building an independent L2 is a "dead end," it means Vitalik's new vision leaves no room for those trying to issue their own tokens and establish independent states. The VCs still fantasizing about chain launches, token issuance, and leeks, even with the most beautiful PPTs, are now holding worthless paper.

The Cold Return of "Native Scaling"
Vitalik is flipping the chessboard, even if it means hurting some along the way. The new trend points to "Native Scaling" and deep integration with ZKVM. This isn't just a technical upgrade; it's a reclaiming of power.
The authority over sequencing and execution, originally delegated to L2s, will now be taken back by Ethereum through more fundamental protocol designs (like Based Rollups).
The future logic is simple: either you become Ethereum's "pipeline," fully obeying L1's security and ordering, and forget about issuing tokens and building independent kingdoms; or you roll out. This shift is a long-term boon for ETH's price because it re-establishes ETH as the sole value capture, no longer being drained by L2 tokens.
But for those L2 projects valued in the billions, this is nothing less than a catastrophe. The $600 million liquidation isn't just about the death of multiple armies; it's the rubble of the old logic collapsing. Ethereum is finally no longer trying to be the benevolent "Mother of All Chains"; it now aims to be the absolute dictator, the "Dark Forest King."