Vitalik Buterin reveals L1 and L2 expansion strategies for Ethereum as part of the ecosystem’s long-term goals

Vitalik Buterin, the prominent figure behind Ethereum, has published an article detailing the ecosystem’s plans to scale its L1 and L2 solutions on his blog. According to the article, Ethereum will remain committed to building a global censorship-free and permissionless blockchain.

Crypto pioneer and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has rolled out plans for Ethereum to expand L1 and L2 solutions as the ecosystem’s long-term goals and scaling strategies. In the blog post, Vitalik detailed that Ethereum’s commitment to creating a global, censorship-resistant, and permissionless blockchain will remain.

Buterin referenced Ethereum’s evolution in the last decade, saying that the smart contracting platform has grown its cryptography, economics, and social technology innovation. 

Vitalik Buterin says L2 solutions have achieved key decentralized milestones

L2s have made great progress, and this is a testament to Ethereum's ecosystem and development philosophy working in action. pic.twitter.com/CGVwBYUemj

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 24, 2025

Vitalik Buterin explained that the ecosystem has shifted its scaling trajectory to focus on layer 2 protocols (L2s). According to the article, the L2s of 2025 are miles ahead of early experiments conducted in 2019. Buterin explained that today’s L2s have achieved key decentralized milestones, including securing billions of dollars. Buterin also mentioned that the modern L2s have scaled Ethereum’s capacity by 17X and have dropped fees similarly.

Vitalik mentioned that the rise of successful projects such as Worldchain (with more than 10 million users) has made crucial contributions to the underlying ecosystem, helping Ethereum grow further. The crypto pioneer explained that L2 solutions face scalability and heterogeneity as the two main challenges. According to the Ethereum co-founder, the Ethereum blob space barely covers the L2s and the use cases of today.

Buterin wrote that the first challenge is easy to understand but possesses difficulties during implementations. Buterin proposed a technical solution of giving the Ethereum network more blobs and moderate L1 scaling amounts in the short term. Buterin added that improvements to proof of stake, stateless and light verification, storage, the EVM, and cryptography could also help overcome the challenge.

While referencing the second challenge, Buterin explained that the difficulty is a coordination problem because of the greater magnitude and diversity of actors and goals. He proposed giving up on L2s and doing everything through L1 with a higher gas limit, either across one shard or many shards. 

However, Buterin noted that the approach compromises on a lot of merits of the existing Ethereum social structure. With the shortcomings of the proposed solutions, Vitalik stuck with the notion of staying on course and continuing to scale primarily through Layer 2 solutions making sure the platforms meet their promises. 

Vitalik Buterin: L1 needs to accelerate scaling blobs

According to Buterin, L1 needs to accelerate scaling blobs. L1 also needs to moderate the scaling of the EVM and increase the gas limit to handle activities in an L2-dominated realm. Buterin also emphasized that L2 solutions need to improve their security.

Vitalik also wrote that L2s and wallets need to improve their interoperability including chain-specific addresses as well as message-passing and bridge standards. He highlighted that L2 deposit and withdrawal durations need to become much faster. Vitalik also suggested that the Ethereum ecosystem needs to have an increased blob count over time.

According to the computer programmer, Ethereum could exceed 128 blobs per slot, bringing its TPS to 100,000. He suggested that the ecosystem should be more willing to explicitly deprioritize features that are not blobs. Vitalik also explained that blobs are the goal, but rather p2p R&D talent acquisition should be made a priority.

Native rollups on the Ethereum ecosystem are still in the early stages of development. According to Vitalik, the rollups require substantial active thought, particularly on maximizing the flexibility of native rollup precompiled. Buterin concluded the article by stating that now is the time to double down on efforts. The Ethereum co-founder acknowledged that many areas still require active thinking and brainstorming. He also said that the future of Ethereum depends on the active participation of everyone involved.

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