Understanding Vitalik's L2 Reflection: Saying Goodbye to Fragmentation, Restoring Order in the New Stage with Native Rollup

Author: 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 negatively by the market as a dismissal or even negation of L2. However, a careful review of Vitalik’s core views, 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 the current narrative:

Ethereum is not abandoning L2 but redefining roles—L1 should return to its safest settlement layer position, while L2 pursues differentiation and specialization, allowing the strategic focus to shift back to the mainnet itself.

1. Has L2 fulfilled its historical mission?

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

In the initial Rollup-Centric roadmap, roles were very clear: L1 responsible for security and data availability, L2 responsible for extreme scalability and low gas fees. During an era when gas fees could 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 broad L2 solutions, but the proliferation of these does not mean the structure is mature; most are progressing slowly in decentralization.

Here, a fundamental knowledge point needs to be clarified. As early as 2022, Vitalik criticized most Rollup architectures with “training wheels” (auxiliary layers), stating they rely 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 dividing Rollups into three decentralization stages: Stage 0, fully dependent on centralized control; Stage 1, with limited reliance; and Stage 2, fully decentralized. It also reflects the degree of reliance on human intervention in Rollup auxiliary layers.

Recently, Vitalik pointed out that some L2s, due to regulatory or commercial reasons, may remain at “Stage 1” indefinitely, relying on security councils to control upgrades. This means such L2s are essentially “secondary L1s” with cross-chain bridging properties, not the originally envisioned “sharded brands.”

To put it plainly, if control over ordering, upgrades, and final authority is concentrated in a few entities, it contradicts Ethereum’s decentralization ethos and turns L2 into a parasitic entity draining value from the mainnet.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of L2 solutions has led to another deep-rooted structural issue: liquidity fragmentation.

This causes the original traffic on Ethereum to be gradually divided into isolated value islands, and as the number of public chains and L2s increases, liquidity fragmentation worsens—contrary to the initial 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—strengthening Ethereum’s position as the most trusted global settlement layer through institutionalized scaling and protocol-native security mechanisms.

In this context, scalability is no longer the sole goal. Security, neutrality, and predictability are becoming core assets of Ethereum again. The future of L2 is not about quantity but about deeper integration with the mainnet and innovation in specialized 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 Wang Xiaowei’s (Hsiao-Wei Wang) views at Consensus 2026 align with this: L1 should serve as the most secure settlement layer, carrying the most critical activities; while 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.

If the past five years’ keyword was “Rollup-Centric,” current discussions are 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 main 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 transaction ordering. In other words, the Ethereum protocol itself integrates Rollup-like validation 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 appears embedded within Ethereum, inheriting L1’s censorship resistance and activity, and crucially solving the most challenging L2 problem—synchronous composability. Within a Based Rollup block, you can directly invoke L1 liquidity, enabling atomic cross-layer transactions.

However, Based Rollup faces a practical challenge: if it strictly follows L1’s pace (a slot every 12 seconds), user experience becomes sluggish. Currently, even if transactions are included in a block, finality takes about 13 minutes (2 epochs), which is too slow for financial applications.

Interestingly, on Vitalik’s recent reflection thread on L2, he recommended a community proposal from January: “Combining preconfirmations with based rollups for synchronous composability.” The core idea isn’t just promoting Based Rollup but proposing a hybrid structure:

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

In Based Rollup, pre-confirmation means that before transactions are officially committed to L1, a designated role (like an L1 proposer) commits to including them. This aligns with Ethereum’s Interop roadmap’s Project #4: Fast L1 Confirmation Rule.

Its 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 doesn’t introduce new consensus processes but reuses attester votes that occur every slot in Ethereum’s PoS system. When a block in an early slot accumulates enough, sufficiently dispersed validator votes, it can be considered “extremely unlikely to be rolled back under reasonable attack models,” even if it hasn’t reached finality.

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

This layered confirmation logic allows Ethereum to finely balance “security” and “perceived speed,” potentially creating 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 solutions expressed willingness to explore and embrace the Native Rollup path to improve overall network consistency and synergy. This signals that the Ethereum ecosystem is undergoing a painful but necessary de-foaming process: shifting from “quantity of chains” to “protocol unification.”

However, as Ethereum’s underlying roadmap is recalibrated and advanced—especially with ongoing improvements to 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 layer 1 scaling, 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 confusing seed phrases and EOA addresses. For imToken users, this means entering the crypto world as easily as registering a social account.
• Privacy and ZK-EVM: Privacy features are no longer fringe. As ZK-EVM technology matures, Ethereum will maintain transparency while providing on-chain privacy protections for commercial applications—becoming a key competitive advantage in the public chain space.
• 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.

Returning to the initial question: Has Vitalik truly “negated” L2?

A more accurate understanding is that he is rejecting an over-expanding, detached, fragmented narrative—this is not the end but a new beginning. From the grand illusion of “sharded brands” back to the refined approach of Based Rollup and pre-confirmation, this shift actually reinforces Ethereum L1’s position as the global trust anchor.

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