This week, Vitalik Buterin told the Ethereum community that the idea of using layer 2s “no longer makes sense.” He cited slow layer 2 progress and recent gains in Ethereum’s own scaling, a shift that prompted a renewed focus on mainnet.
Founders of major layer 2s responded rapidly on social media and defended their work. Karl Floersch of Optimism replied “Challenge accepted,” as his post wrote.
Buterin said layer 1 now scales and urged layer 2s to seek new roles beyond raw throughput. He wrote “It’s fine because Ethereum itself is now scaling directly on layer 1.” (Ed. note: Ether’s price fell this week.)
Some teams said they already plan to specialise and add features beyond scaling. Jesse Pollak of Base described that shift in a post.
Alex Gluchowski of Zksync said his chain will emphasise privacy, calling it “the Bank Stack of Ethereum” in a post. Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of Arbitrum, argued rollups now prioritise customisation as well as scaling in a post.
