Vitalik Buterin: The original vision for Ethereum L2 is no longer applicable, a new path must be found

According to Odaily, vitalik.eth posted on X stating that there has been an increase in discussions about the ongoing role of L2s within the Ethereum ecosystem. Since the progress of L2s entering stage 2 has been much slower than expected and L1 itself is scaling—with gas limits expected to increase significantly by 2026—the original vision of L2s as Ethereum "brand shards" is no longer applicable, and a new path is needed.

Vitalik Buterin pointed out that L1 no longer needs L2s as brand shards, and that L2s are either unable or unwilling to meet the requirements needed for true brand shards. He suggested that L2s should identify value propositions beyond just "scaling," such as privacy, efficiency for specific applications, extreme levels of scalability, non-financial application design, ultra-low latency, and built-in oracles. If handling ETH or other Ethereum assets, L2s should at least reach stage 1 and support maximum interoperability with Ethereum.

Additionally, Vitalik Buterin stated that over the past few months he has become more convinced of the value of native rollup precompiles, especially after having ZK-EVM proofs needed for scaling L1. This precompile would make EVM verification without a security council feasible. He believes research should be conducted on how to design this precompile so that when L2s include "EVM and other content," the EVM part can be verified. This would make it easier to achieve secure, robust, and trustless interoperability with Ethereum, as well as synchronous composability.