Vitalik: The original vision for Ethereum L2 is no longer applicable, and a new path needs to be found

Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform, stating that there has been an increasing discussion about the ongoing role of L2 in the Ethereum ecosystem. Due to the slow progress of L2 entering phase 2, and the expansion of L1 itself, it is expected that the Gas limit will significantly increase by 2026. This means that the original vision of L2 as Ethereum's "branded sharding" is no longer applicable, and new paths are needed.

Vitalik Buterin pointed out that L1 no longer needs L2 as branded sharding, and that L2 cannot or is unwilling to meet the attributes required for true branded sharding. He suggested that L2 should identify value points beyond "scalability," such as privacy, efficiency for specific applications, extreme levels of scalability, non-financial application design, ultra-low latency, and built-in oracles. When handling ETH or other Ethereum assets, L2 should at least reach phase 1 and support maximum interoperability with Ethereum. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin stated that he has become more convinced of the value of native Rollup precompiles in recent months, especially after having the ZK-EVM proof needed for scaling L1. This precompile would make EVM verification without a security committee feasible. He believes that research should be conducted on how to design this precompile so that it can verify the EVM portion when L2 includes "EVM and other content." This would make achieving secure, robust, and trustless interoperability with Ethereum easier and enable synchronous composability.