Vitalik: Unless L2 can "scale to the limit" or make a breakthrough, the original vision is no longer valid

On February 3, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted: “Now that Ethereum’s Layer 1 (L1) has scaled significantly and its gas limit has risen sharply, the original vision of ‘brand-based sharding’ for Layer 2 (L2) is no longer necessary. L2s cannot fully deliver the intended features of ‘brand-based sharding,’ and some projects may even stay in Stage 1 indefinitely to meet customer regulatory requirements. Thus, L2s should be repositioned: instead of just chasing scalability, they should offer unique additional features—like privacy-focused virtual machines, application-specific efficiency, maximum scalability, non-financial use cases (social, identity, AI), low latency, or built-in oracles.” Best practices for L2s include: upholding at least Stage 1 standards (otherwise, they’re essentially independent L1s with bridges) and prioritizing interoperability with Ethereum as much as possible. Additionally, exploring integration with native rollup precompiles (ZK-EVM verification) to enable secure, trustless cross-chain operations and synchronous composability. Users should clearly understand the protections L2s provide. The L2 ecosystem will offer diverse options: chains that fully rely on Ethereum’s trust and credibility, plus chains with varying degrees of connection, each focused on different functions or use cases. This will truly deliver innovative additions—not just extensions of L1.