Understanding Vitalik's L2 Reflection: Moving Away from Fragmentation, Restoring Order in the New Stage with Native Rollups

Article by: imToken

Recently, the most discussed topic in the Ethereum community is undoubtedly Vitalik Buterin’s public reflection on the scalability roadmap.

It can be said that Vitalik’s attitude is quite “sharp,” openly stating that as Ethereum’s mainnet (L1) scalability improves, the roadmap established five years ago, which regarded L2 as the primary scaling solution, has become invalid.

This statement was initially interpreted by the market as a pessimistic view or even a denial of L2. However, a careful analysis of Vitalik’s core viewpoints, combined with Ethereum’s series of mainnet scaling progress, decentralization assessment frameworks, and recent technical discussions around Native/Based Rollup, reveals that Vitalik is not entirely dismissing the value of L2. Instead, he is advocating for a “correction of course”:

Ethereum is not abandoning L2 but rather redefining the division of labor—L1 returns to its role as the most secure settlement layer, while L2 pursues differentiation and specialization, allowing the strategic focus to return to the mainnet itself.

1. Has L2 fulfilled its historical mission?

Objectively speaking, in the previous cycle, L2 was indeed once seen as Ethereum’s lifeline.

In the initial Rollup-Centric roadmap, the division of responsibilities was very clear: L1 responsible for security and data availability, L2 responsible for extreme scalability and low gas fees. In an era where gas fees could easily reach dozens of dollars, this was almost the only feasible answer.

But reality has proven to be much more complex than expected.

Latest statistics from L2BEAT show that there are now over a hundred generalized L2 solutions, but the proliferation of numbers does not equate to a mature structure. The vast majority are progressing slowly in decentralization.

Here, a fundamental knowledge point needs to be clarified. As early as 2022, Vitalik criticized most Rollups’ “Training Wheels” architecture in his blog, pointing out their reliance on centralized operations and manual interventions for security. Users familiar with L2BEAT will recognize this, as their homepage displays a key metric—Stage:

This is an evaluation framework that divides Rollups into three decentralization stages: Stage 0, fully dependent on centralized control; Stage 1, with limited reliance; and Stage 2, fully decentralized. This also reflects the degree of reliance on manual intervention in Rollups.

Recently, Vitalik reflected that some L2s, due to regulatory or commercial needs, may remain forever at “Stage 1,” relying on security councils to control upgradeability. This means such L2s are essentially “secondary L1s” with cross-chain bridging attributes, rather than the originally envisioned “brand sharding.”

To put it plainly, if the ordering rights, upgrade rights, and final decision-making are concentrated in a few entities, it not only contradicts Ethereum’s decentralization ethos but also makes L2 a parasitic “bloodsucker” on the mainnet.

Meanwhile, the explosion in the number of L2 solutions has brought about another deep-seated structural issue that many have felt over the past years: liquidity fragmentation.

This has gradually dispersed the traffic originally concentrated on Ethereum, forming isolated value islands. As the number of public chains and L2s increases, the degree of liquidity fragmentation will intensify—contrary to the original purpose of scalability.

From this perspective, it’s understandable why Vitalik emphasizes that the next step for L2 is not more chains but deeper integration. Ultimately, this is a timely correction—through institutionalized scaling and protocol-native security mechanisms, reinforcing L1’s role as the most trusted global settlement layer.

In this context, scalability is no longer the sole goal. Security, neutrality, and predictability have become core assets of Ethereum again. The future of L2 is not about quantity but about deeper integration with the mainnet and innovation in niche scenarios.

For example, providing unique additional functions such as privacy-specific virtual machines, extreme scalability, or dedicated environments for AI agents and non-financial applications.

Ethereum Foundation co-CEO Hsiao-Wei Wang’s views at Consensus 2026 align with this: L1 should serve as the most secure settlement layer carrying the most critical activities; L2 should pursue differentiation and specialization, supporting activities that require the best user experience.

2. Native Rollup: Based Rollup + pre-confirmation—The future?

Amid this wave of reflection on L2 narratives, the concept of Based Rollup is poised to shine in 2026.

Because if the past five years’ keyword was “Rollup-Centric,” the current discussion is shifting toward a more specific question: can Rollups “grow inside Ethereum” rather than “hang outside Ethereum”?

Therefore, the current hot topic in the Ethereum community—“Native Rollup”—can be understood as an extension of the Based Rollup concept. If native Rollup is the ultimate ideal, then Based Rollup is the most practical path toward that ideal.

It is well known that the biggest difference between Based Rollup and traditional L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism is that it completely abandons independent, even centralized sequencers, instead relying on Ethereum L1 nodes for ordering. In other words, the Ethereum protocol itself integrates Rollup-like verification logic at the L1 layer, unifying the ultimate performance optimization and protocol-level security previously divided between L2 and the mainnet.

This design gives users the most direct experience: Rollup feels embedded within Ethereum, inheriting L1’s resistance to censorship and activity, and more importantly, solving the most headache-inducing L2 problem—synchronous composability. In a Based Rollup block, you can directly call L1 liquidity to achieve atomic cross-layer transactions.

However, Based Rollup faces a practical challenge: if it fully follows L1’s rhythm (a 12-second slot), user experience may become sluggish. Currently, even if transactions are included in a block, it still takes about 13 minutes (two epochs) to reach finality—too slow for financial scenarios.

Interestingly, on Vitalik’s reflection tweet about L2, he recommended a community proposal from January: “Combining preconfirmations with based rollups for synchronous composability.” The core of this proposal is not just promoting Based Rollup but proposing a hybrid structure:

Retain low-latency sequenced blocks, generate based blocks at the end of slots, submit based blocks to L1, and then combine with pre-confirmation mechanisms to achieve synchronous composability.

In Based Rollup, pre-confirmation means that before transactions are officially submitted to L1, a designated role (such as the proposer) commits that the transaction will be included. This aligns with Ethereum’s Interop roadmap’s Project #4: Fast L1 Confirmation Rule.

Its core goal is straightforward: enable applications and cross-chain systems to receive a “strong and verifiable” L1 confirmation signal within 15–30 seconds, without waiting for the full 13-minute finality.

Mechanistically, the fast confirmation rule does not introduce new consensus processes but reuses the attester votes that occur in each Ethereum PoS slot. When a block in an early slot accumulates enough, sufficiently dispersed validator votes, it can be considered “highly unlikely to be rolled back under reasonable attack models,” even if it has not yet achieved finality.

In simple terms, this confirmation level does not replace finality but provides a protocol-acknowledged strong confirmation before finality. For cross-chain systems, intent solvers, and wallets, this is especially critical: they no longer need to blindly wait for finality but can confidently proceed within 15–30 seconds based on protocol-level confirmation signals.

Through this layered confirmation logic, Ethereum finely segments different trust levels between “security” and “perceived speed,” aiming to create an ultra-smooth interoperability experience (see also “Ethereum’s ‘second-level’ evolution: from fast confirmation to settlement compression—how Interop eliminates waiting?”).

3. What is Ethereum’s future?

Looking back from 2026, Ethereum’s main theme is quietly shifting from pursuing extreme “scalability” to emphasizing “unification, layering, and endogenous security.”

Last month, several senior executives from Ethereum L2 projects expressed willingness to explore and embrace the Native Rollup path, aiming to improve overall network consistency and synergy. This attitude itself is a significant signal: the Ethereum ecosystem is undergoing a painful but necessary de-foaming process—shifting from “pursuing chain quantity” back to “protocol unification.”

However, as Ethereum’s underlying roadmap is recalibrated and advanced, especially with continuous improvements in L1, Based Rollup, and pre-confirmation mechanisms, the underlying performance bottleneck is no longer the chain itself. A more pressing issue emerges—the biggest bottleneck is now wallets and entry barriers.

This echoes imToken’s repeated insight in 2025: as infrastructure becomes more invisible, the true limit of scalability will be determined by entry-level user experience.

Overall, beyond underlying scalability, the future of Ethereum’s ecosystem expansion and scaling will not focus solely on TPS or blob counts but will revolve around three more structurally meaningful directions:

• Account abstraction and lowering entry barriers: Ethereum is pushing for native account abstraction (Native AA). Future smart contract wallets will become the default, replacing cumbersome mnemonic phrases and EOA addresses. For imToken users, entering the crypto world will be as simple as registering a social account (see also “From EOA to account abstraction: Will the next Web3 leap happen in the ‘account system’?”);
• Privacy and ZK-EVM: Privacy features are no longer fringe needs. As ZK-EVM technology matures, Ethereum will maintain transparency while providing on-chain privacy protections for commercial applications—this will be a core competitive advantage in the public chain race (see also “ZK roadmap ‘dawn’: Is Ethereum’s finality roadmap accelerating?”);
• On-chain sovereignty of AI Agents: By 2026, transaction initiators may no longer be humans but AI agents. The challenge will be establishing trustless interaction standards: how to ensure AI agents act according to user intent and are not manipulated by third parties? Ethereum’s decentralized settlement layer will become the most reliable rule-setter for the AI economy (see also “New ticket for the AI Agent era: Pushing ERC-8004, what is Ethereum betting on?”).

Returning to the initial question: Has Vitalik really “denied” L2?

A more accurate understanding is that he is rejecting an over-expanding, disconnected, fragmented narrative—this is not the end but a new beginning. From the grand illusion of “brand sharding” back to the refined integration of Based Rollup and pre-confirmation, this shift actually helps reinforce Ethereum L1’s position as the global trust backbone.

However, this also means that in this pragmatic return to technology, only innovations rooted in Ethereum’s new foundational principles and aligned with the mainnet’s destiny will survive and thrive in the next great voyage.