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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has commented on the layer 2 ecosystem, pointing out that he’ll shun projects that will not be at ‘stage 1’ of decentralization by early next year.
Buterin took to X on September 12 to share his observations around L2 projects and the issue of decentralization.
In the post, the Ethereum co-founder stated he intends to acknowledge or support L2 scaling solutions that have reached “stage 1” of decentralization.
He also responded to the recent selling of Ethereum (ETH) linked to accounts he controls.
‘Stage 1 or bust’, Vitalik Buterin tells L2 scaling solutions
Buterin’s latest remarks on the decentralization comes as several zero-knowledge rollup projects look to achieve milestones across three stages of a development criteria Buterin highlighted in 2022.
The benchmarks form what the Ethereum co-founder dubbed as ‘training wheels’ – a path to decentralization for scaling solutions.
In this quest, layer 2 protocols have to go through ‘stage 0’ or ‘full training wheels,’, ‘stage 1’ and then finally ‘stage 2’ or ‘no training wheels’.
In stage 0, projects that categorize themselves as rollups have features such as full on-chain transactions. The protocols nonetheless only have simple multisig wallets and implement no fraud or validity proofs.
Fraud proofs, a security council with a given threshold and quorum-blocking group are key to ‘stage 1’.
Its projects at this level of decentralization that Buterin now says he will acknowledge regardless whether he invested in them or personally knows the team.
“I take this seriously. Starting next year, I plan to only publicly mention (in blogs, talks, etc) L2s that are stage 1+, with *maybe a short grace period* for new genuinely interesting projects,” the Ethereum co-founder wrote.
He added, “It doesn’t matter if I invested, or if you’re my friend; stage 1 or bust….The era of rollups being glorified multisigs is coming to an end. The era of cryptographic trust is upon us.”
According to Buterin, several ZK-rollup projects say they will be at stage 1 decentralization by the end of this year.
Projects such as Optimism, ZKsync and Arbitrum – leading L2 solutions on Ethereum – have said it’s possible to achieve full decentralization in the next few years.
Ethereum sales
The price of Ethereum is slightly in the green over the past 24 hours. However, the leading altcoin by market cap continues to struggle with downside pressure with price below $2,400.
Part of the downturn has come amid increased selling by wallets related to Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation.
In one of the latest instances, a wallet linked to the Ethereum co-founder sold 190 ETH for $441,971.
Data LookOnChain shared shows the wallet initially received 3,800 ETH worth over $9.8 million from Buterin. Since August 30, 2024, the wallet has sold 950 ETH worth $2.2 million.
The ETH co-founder commented on the wallet’s dump on Sept. 11:
That sale from yesterday (by a bio-defense group I fund) was triggered by an automatic cowswap twap order that was set up way back on Aug 29. That was the last one.
Ethereum currently trades around $2,363 – down 2% this past week and more than 11% down in the past 30 days.
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