Vitalik Buterin: The original vision for Ethereum Layer 2 solutions is no longer suitable; we need to explore new approaches and pathways to achieve scalability, security, and decentralization effectively in the evolving blockchain landscape.

According to CoinWorld.com, vitalik.eth posted on the X platform that there has been an increase in discussions about the continued role of L2 in the Ethereum ecosystem recently. As L2s progress much slower than expected into Phase 2 and L1 itself is expanding, gas limits are expected to increase significantly in 2026, which means that L2’s original vision as Ethereum’s “brand sharding” is no longer applicable and requires a new path. Vitalik Buterin noted that L1 no longer needs L2 as brand sharding, and that L2 is unable or unwilling to meet the attributes required for true brand sharding. He suggested that L2s should identify value-added points beyond “scaling,” such as privacy, application-specific efficiency, extreme levels of scaling, non-financial application design, ultra-low latency, and built-in oracles. For ETH or other Ethereum assets, L2 should reach at least Stage 1 and support maximum interoperability with Ethereum. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin said he has become more convinced of the value of native rollup precompilation over the past few months, especially after having the ZK-EVM proofs needed to scale L1. This pre-compilation will make EVM verification without a security committee viable. He believes that the precompilation should be designed to validate the EVM part when L2 contains “EVM and other content.” This will make it easy to achieve secure, robust, trustless interoperability with Ethereum and enable synchronous composability.