In the time zone of UTC+8 this week, Vitalik Buterin has continuously published blogs and made public speeches, systematically reflecting on the strategic positioning and long-term roadmap of Ethereum Layer 2 (L2). This round of redefinition directly addresses the structural disconnection between the "branded sharding" scalability vision proposed in Ethereum's early years and the current reality where Rollups dominate, capital flows in, yet decentralized advancement is slow. He no longer views L2 merely as a "cheaper and faster execution outsourcing layer," but instead proposes a new assertion: "positioning Ethereum as a credibility layer, allowing L2 to undertake differentiated functions such as privacy, AI, and specialized virtual machines beyond scalability." Initial market reactions focus on two points: first, L1 actively accelerating scalability and reshaping trust anchors; second, a revaluation and wait-and-see attitude towards the long-term commercial narrative of general-purpose Rollups.
Turning from Branded Sharding to Credibility Layer
● The early scalability blueprint of Ethereum revolved around "branded sharding": L1 is responsible for consensus and security, while multiple shard chains carry out execution, narratively resembling "Ethereum branches" backed by official endorsement. However, with the establishment of the Rollup route, the market-driven L2 ecosystem has rapidly grown, and the actual development is far more complex than the design: different Rollups adopt their own bridges, sequencers, and governance structures, diluting the sense of unity of branded sharding with fragmented realities, which has led to resistance at both engineering and governance levels.
● In his latest statements, Vitalik clearly proposes to "position Ethereum as a credibility layer," meaning that the core role of L1 shifts from "the main battlefield for execution and scalability" to "providing a minimum assumed trust anchor for various upper-layer chains and applications." Consensus and data availability on L1 are elevated to the highest priority, while complex business logic, differentiated functions, and even radical experiments are guided to L2 and higher-level execution, forming a structure of a secure, simple core with diverse shells.
● As controversies surrounding centralized L2 sequencers, cross-chain bridge permissions, and multi-signature management continue to be amplified, coupled with the apparent slowdown in advancing towards higher decentralization standards (such as the so-called Stage 2) compared to early expectations, the community has begun to hesitate about the route of "leaving everything to Rollups." In this context, redefining the L1/L2 relationship through the narrative of "credibility layer": L1 no longer endorses all executions but provides foundational trust for those upper-layer components that can clearly inherit its security assumptions, while maintaining a more cautious positioning distinction for L2s that overly rely on trust.
Accelerating L1 Scalability: Dilution of L2's Original Selling Points
● Ethereum is advancing a series of technical initiatives in the direction of L1 scalability, focusing on data availability and transaction capacity, including data sampling and distribution solutions like PeerDAS. Although the underlying implementation details are still evolving, the overall goal is clear: to increase the available data bandwidth and the upper limit of gas limit without compromising security. For users, this means the potential to package more transactions and batches of data on L1 is being released, laying the foundation for future reductions in average gas costs and increased throughput.
● Judgments cited in research briefs indicate that significant improvements in gas limit scalability for Ethereum L1 are expected by 2026. If this trend materializes, the single narrative that "the core selling point of L2 is cheaper gas and higher TPS" will be significantly weakened: as native L1 becomes more abundant and transaction capacity stronger, merely providing marginally cheaper execution space will struggle to support a long-term sustainable commercial premium and will find it difficult to form a sufficiently strong moat.
● From the perspective of developers and application deployment, once L1 becomes relatively cheaper and has higher throughput, the motivation to "migrate to a certain Rollup just to save a little on fees" will decrease. For ordinary DApps, the complexity of cross-chain bridges, user education costs, and combinatorial losses with other protocols are enough to offset slight cost advantages. Thus, a singular pursuit of "cheaper and faster" general-purpose L2s will fall into homogeneous competition, while L2s lacking unique features, strong communities, or ecological niches may become marginalized under the pressure of L1 scalability and multi-L2 competition.
L2 is No Longer Just Scalability: Breakthroughs in Privacy and Differentiated Functions
● Vitalik emphasized in public statements that "L2 is not only for scalability but also for unique functions such as privacy and AI," directly elevating L2 from a one-dimensional scalability tool to a platform for functional innovation. The core of this shift is the acknowledgment that directly introducing complex privacy systems and AI collaborative execution on L1 would significantly increase protocol complexity and attack surfaces, while outsourcing these to L2 allows for more radical functional experiments and product innovations at the upper layer while maintaining L1's simplicity as a credibility layer.
● For example, in terms of privacy, certain L2s can incorporate stronger zero-knowledge privacy protections, account abstraction, and even customized compliance logic for enterprises or institutions; at the virtual machine level, specialized VMs optimized for AI inference, batch settlement, and specific financial derivatives can emerge. These capabilities are realized at the L2 layer, anchoring state and proofs back to L1 through Rollups, allowing L1 to only verify simple proofs and maintain data availability without bearing cumbersome business rules, thus keeping the security boundary clear and the protocol burden manageable.
● This "specialized L2" route poses a substantial impact on the current landscape of general-purpose Rollups: not all L2s are competing for the same abstract "Ethereum scalability entry," but are diverging towards segmented tracks such as "privacy-specific chains," "AI/DeFi dedicated settlement layers," and "game and social-specific execution environments." A new narrative emerges—projects are no longer just competing on TVL and transaction counts but must prove their technical depth, ecological integration, and unique supplementary value to Ethereum's credibility layer in a specific vertical field.
ZK and DVT On-chain: Re-anchoring the Security Model
● Recently, Vitalik advocated for integrating ZK-EVM proof verification and DVT (Distributed Validator Technology) at the protocol level, thereby embedding key security components that currently exist mainly in the form of "contract layer plugins" and "middleware services" into the protocol itself. This means that ZK proofs are no longer just an option for individual Rollups to self-regulate at the contract layer but are incorporated as part of Ethereum's core consensus and verification process; similarly, DVT is elevated from a service layer tool to a foundational capability within the consensus participation structure, aimed at reducing single-point risks at the validator node level.
● Once ZK-EVM proof verification enters the protocol layer, the security assumptions of Rollups will undergo a qualitative change: L2 no longer needs to rely on complex contract logic to convince users of the validity of its state but can anchor state correctness directly on Ethereum consensus through L1's native proof verification channel. This highly resonates with the positioning of "Ethereum as a credibility layer"—once the proof is accepted by L1, it gains the same level of trust as L1's state; conversely, systems lacking this native proof path have their trust boundaries more easily distinguished and scrutinized by the market.
● For DVT, if it is integrated more deeply into the protocol security structure, it is expected to alleviate concerns about validator centralization and single-point failures through multi-node collaboration, key sharding, and fault tolerance mechanisms. This technology provides a structural alleviation path for long-standing community concerns about "staking being concentrated in a few node operators" and "node operation thresholds leading to erosion of decentralization." Security and decentralization no longer rely entirely on self-discipline and governance design but become the default attributes of the system through protocol layer capabilities, making "malicious actions harder and fault tolerance stronger."
Decentralization Progress Stalling and Signals of Capital Investment
● In terms of decentralization goals, multiple L2s are generally seen as still having a significant gap from the higher standard of Stage 2, and the pace of advancement is slower than earlier community expectations. The reality that sequencers remain centralized entities, upgrades are controlled by a few multi-signatures, and emergency pause permissions are broad has gradually cooled the originally optimistic expectation that "Rollups will soon achieve high decentralization." Discussions around Stage standards have shifted from initial route consensus to today's community's ongoing pressure of "when will it be realized" and "has it been weakened."
● In this broader context, Vitalik's action of withdrawing 16,384 ETH from personal funds to finance security-related projects is particularly noteworthy. Although the research brief marks it as based on a single source, it nonetheless appears more like a long-term signal: the funds are not directed towards short-term price speculation but are betting on enhancing security tools, formalizing verification, client diversity, and attack emergency response infrastructure, echoing his overall intention to re-anchor Ethereum as a credibility layer rather than a one-time market operation.
● As security investments and protocol-level transformations advance in tandem, Ethereum attempts to rebuild a fragile balance: on one hand, maintaining a high innovation speed for new L2 functions, ZK/AI/privacy, and other cutting-edge directions; on the other hand, reinforcing the system's principle of minimal trust through protocol layer integration and long-term funding support. This path acknowledges that the decentralization goals may slow down due to real-world constraints in the short term, but by thickening the security toolchain and consensus layer capabilities, it aims to ensure that "slower but more stable and verifiable" long-term trust dividends cover short-term uncertainties.
Where to Bet for Ethereum's Next Decade
With this round of route adjustment as a dividing line, Vitalik is transitioning Ethereum from a singular "scalability narrative" to a long-term strategic framework of "credibility layer + differentiated L2 ecosystem": L1 focuses on consensus and data availability, becoming the source of trust for various upper-layer systems; L2 shifts from price and performance competition to multidimensional differentiation in functions and security models, building new ecological niches and value capture mechanisms around privacy, AI, specialized VMs, and more. This is both a correction of the reality that branded sharding has not fully landed and a structural re-layout of the complex game of the Rollup era.
In the next two to three years, a gradually forming multi-layer competitive landscape can be anticipated: on one side, L1 continues to scale in gas limit and data bandwidth, providing a wider "trust base" for more Rollups and applications; on the other side, technologies like ZK proofs and DVT gradually converge towards the protocol layer, reshaping the security boundaries of Rollups and validators; meanwhile, L2s internally transition from general settlement layers to functional differentiation, with different tracks making their own trade-offs between trust inheritance, privacy protection, execution efficiency, and developer friendliness, forming a more three-dimensional ecological structure.
For individual participants, the framework for evaluating L2 projects also needs to be updated: first, look at their security assumptions—can they inherit the security boundaries of Ethereum's credibility layer as directly as possible, or do they layer on additional trust assumptions; second, examine their differentiated capabilities—beyond being cheap and fast, do they form truly unique technical and product advantages in privacy, AI, compliance, specialized VMs, etc.; third, assess their dependence on Ethereum's credibility layer—is it a shallow linkage or a deep binding, and whether in dimensions like ZK proofs, data availability, and bridge security, they are in sync with L1's long-term direction. Reassessing L2 value along these three main lines may truly place one at the edge of the betting table for Ethereum's next decade.
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