L2 Fragmentation and Power Division: Vitalik Reflects on the Future of Native Ethereum Rollups

In recent months, the Ethereum community has been stirred by Vitalik Buterin’s public reflections on the network’s scalability roadmap. Vitalik’s core idea isn’t about rejecting Layer 2 solutions but about dividing authority—how to distribute responsibilities and power between L1 as the secure settlement layer and L2 as the specialized expansion layer. This understanding marks a paradigm shift from “extreme expansion chasing the highest TPS” to “protocol unification with clear role separation.”

Power Division Crisis: Why L2 Is No Longer Just a Scalability Solution

When Ethereum gas fees once soared to tens of dollars, L2 was almost the only way out. But reality has proven far more complex than initial expectations. Data from L2BEAT shows that although hundreds of L2 protocols have emerged, most remain in low decentralization stages. Specifically, many L2 configurations still concentrate power heavily.

The evaluation framework known as “Stage” or decentralization stage divides Rollups into three categories: Stage 0 (fully centralized), Stage 1 (partially decentralized), and Stage 2 (fully decentralized). Vitalik has criticized that some L2s may remain stuck in Stage 1 forever, relying on security councils to control upgrades. When sequencers, upgrade rights, and final decisions are concentrated in a few entities, those L2s are essentially “secondary L1s” with cross-chain bridge attributes.

This unhealthy power distribution leads to tangible user consequences: liquidity fragmentation. Capital flows that once focused on Ethereum are now split into disconnected value islands. As more L2s and similar public solutions emerge, fragmentation worsens, creating an illusion of scalability without addressing fundamental issues.

This is why Vitalik emphasizes that the future of L2 isn’t about more chains but deeper consolidation. It’s about balancing power sharing realistically: strengthening L1 as the most secure settlement layer in the world, while L2s seek differentiation and specialization in specific segments.

Native Rollup and Pre-Confirmation: Reconfiguring L1-L2 Role Sharing

In this context, the concepts of Based Rollup and “Native Rollup” are emerging as more structured solutions. If five years ago the main theme was “Rollup-Centric,” now the question becomes more concrete: Can Rollups “grow within Ethereum” rather than “hang outside Ethereum”?

The fundamental difference between Based Rollup and traditional L2s like Arbitrum and Optimism lies in sequencing authority. Based Rollup completely abandons independent, centralized sequencers, instead using Ethereum L1 nodes directly for transaction ordering. This means the verification logic of the Rollup is integrated into the Ethereum protocol itself, combining extreme performance optimization with protocol-level security. The result is the most direct user experience—Rollup becomes an organic part of Ethereum, inheriting resistance to censorship and activity from L1, and crucially, solving cross-layer composability issues.

However, Based Rollup faces practical challenges. If it fully follows L1’s pace (12 seconds per slot), users must wait about 13 minutes for full finality—too slow for high-speed financial activities.

Here, a community proposal from early 2026 introduces a hybrid approach combining pre-confirmation with Based Rollup for synchronous composability. This strategy maintains low-latency ordered blocks early on, producing blocks at the end of slots, and uses pre-confirmation to ensure transaction inclusion. Pre-confirmation works as follows: when a transaction is officially submitted to L1, certain roles like the proposer commit to including the transaction in the next block.

This concept aligns with the Ethereum Interoperability roadmap, which explicitly mentions “Fast L1 Confirmation Rules” as Project #4. The goal is to enable cross-chain applications to receive “strong and verifiable” L1 confirmation signals within 15–30 seconds, without waiting 13 minutes for full finality. The mechanism isn’t a new consensus process but reuses attester voting that occurs each slot in Ethereum’s PoS system. This creates a nuanced trust layer between security and speed, opening unprecedented interoperability opportunities.

Trust Foundations: Ethereum’s Future in Clear Role Division

From a 2026 perspective, Ethereum’s mainstream shift is from chasing “extreme expansion” to “protocol unification, stratification, and clear origin-based security.” Some Ethereum L2 solution leaders have expressed interest in exploring Native Rollup pathways to enhance overall network consistency. This change in attitude signals a painful but necessary simplification process—moving from chasing chain count back to pursuing protocol unification.

As Ethereum strengthens L1, Based Rollup, and pre-confirmation become realities, performance bottlenecks are no longer the main obstacle. The new challenge is the largest barrier: wallets and user entry thresholds. That’s why platforms like imToken and other wallets play a critical role in this new era.

Three structural directions will define Ethereum’s future ecosystem:

First, Native Account Abstraction (Native AA). Ethereum is pushing for account abstraction at the protocol level, making smart contract wallets the default user interface in the future. Entering crypto will become as easy as signing up for a social media account, no longer dealing with recovery phrases and complex EOA addresses.

Second, Privacy and ZK-EVM. Privacy features are no longer niche needs. As ZK-EVM matures, Ethereum will offer on-chain privacy protections for commercial applications while maintaining protocol transparency. This will be a competitive advantage in the public blockchain space.

Third, On-Chain Sovereignty for AI Agents. By 2026, transaction initiators may no longer be humans but AI agents. The challenge is to build trustless interaction standards: how to ensure AI agents act according to user intent and aren’t controlled by third parties? Ethereum’s decentralized settlement layer will become the most trusted arbiter in the AI economy.

Conclusion: From Fragmentation to Healthy Power Sharing

Vitalik is not “rejecting” L2. What he opposes is the narrative of excessive fragmentation where each L2 operates independently, disconnected from the main network. What he advocates is a reorientation: L1 returns to the foundation of global security, L2s pursue domain-specific innovation, and the entire ecosystem moves forward through clear power sharing and mature interoperability mechanisms.

Within this pragmatic adjustment lies an intriguing paradox: by strengthening Ethereum L1 through Based Rollup, pre-confirmation, and account abstraction, Ethereum actually provides L2 with a more solid foundation for innovation. But only innovations rooted in Ethereum’s core principles and breathing in harmony with the main protocol will endure and thrive in the next era of exploration.