Ethereum was cheaper than expected in 2020, and rollup decentralization was slower than promised in 2021. Those two realities are forced the ecosystem to rewrite what “a layer-2” is for.

Vitalik Buterin’s recent post on Ethereum Research bluntly frames the shift: the original vision of layer-2 (L2) blockchains as “branded shards” of Ethereum is no longer viable, and the ecosystem requires a new path.

However, this isn’t abandonment. Instead, it is a re-tiering of expectations and a sharper definition of what different types of rollups are actually building.

The question now is the new job description, since the premise underlying the rollup-centric roadmap has weakened.

Stage 2 is scarce

L2BEAT provides the clearest framework for understanding rollup decentralization through its Stages system.

Stage 0 denotes that training wheels remain in place, with meaningful trust assumptions persisting.

Stage 1 represents partial decentralization with stronger escape hatches and proof guarantees, but still meaningful upgrade or governance trust.

Stage 2 is the “no training wheels” milestone, in which critical safety properties are enforced by code rather than by discretionary actors.

The current distribution of value secured across the L2 ecosystem indicates this. According to L2BEAT’s rollup scaling summary, approximately 91.5% of the listed value sits in Stage 1 rollups, 8.5% in Stage 0, and roughly 0.01% in Stage 2.

The top three rollups by value account for roughly 71% of the total, indicating that “Stage 2 progress” largely depends on the decisions of the largest few projects, rather than on what smaller experimental chains attempt.

The core blocker is whether the proof systems can be overridden and whether upgrades face strong delays and constraints.

Upgrade discretion remains common among the largest rollups, and moving beyond it has proven slower and more difficult than anticipated by the 2020-2021 optimism.

Some projects have explicitly stated that they may not wish to proceed beyond Stage 1, citing not only technical constraints related to zkEVM safety but also regulatory requirements that require absolute control.

That’s a legitimate product decision for certain customer bases, but it clarifies that those chains are not “scaling Ethereum” in the sense the rollup-centric roadmap originally meant.

Why the constraints changed

The Oct. 2, 2020, post “A rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap” on the Fellowship of Ethereum Magicians laid out the original thesis.

Gas prices were climbing, some applications were being forced to shut down, and the conclusion was that the ecosystem would be “all-in on rollups” for the near and medium term.

Base-layer scaling should prioritize data capacity for rollups, and users would increasingly live on L2.

Two hard facts have shifted since then. First, L1 is substantially cheaper at present. Etherscan shows a seven-day average transaction fee of around $0.35 and gas snapshots in the fractions of a gwei.

On Jan. 16, Ethereum recorded an all-time high of 2,885,524 transactions in a single day. The narrative is “busier and cheaper,” exactly the opposite of the 2020 crisis that motivated the rollup-centric roadmap.

Second, L1 execution capacity is rising. Ethereum’s block gas limit was raised to approximately 60 million after broad validator signaling in late 2025, up from the long-standing 30 million limit.

At roughly 12-second blocks, 60 million gas translates to approximately 5 million gas per second.

Aspirational community discussions have mentioned targets as high as 180 million gas, which would represent a threefold increase, though that remains directional rather than committed.

The clean interpretation: the 2020 premise that “L1 can’t scale for most users” is weaker in today’s fee regime. This creates room for L2s to be a spectrum of security and sovereignty trade-offs rather than all being near-identical “shards” competing solely on price.

L2s as a spectrum, not clones

Buterin’s proposed reframing treats L2s as occupying a full spectrum.

On one end are chains backed by the full faith and credit of Ethereum, with unique properties, not just EVM clones but also privacy-focused systems, non-EVM execution environments, or ultra-low-latency sequencers.

At the other end are options with varying levels of Ethereum connectivity that users and applications can choose based on their specific needs.

The new minimum bar is straightforward: if you handle ETH or Ethereum-issued assets, reach at least Stage 1.

Otherwise, you’re a separate L1 with a bridge, and should call yourself that. The differentiation bar is harder: be the best at something other than “cheap EVM.”

Examples Buterin cites include privacy, efficiency specialized to a particular application, truly extreme scaling beyond even an expanded L1, fundamentally different designs for non-financial applications such as social or identity systems, ultra-low-latency sequencing, or features such as built-in oracles or decentralized dispute resolution that aren’t computationally verifiable.

The mechanism that might facilitate this is still under investigation. A “native rollup precompile” would enable Ethereum to verify a standard zkEVM proof within the protocol.

For rollups that are “EVM plus extras,” this means the canonical EVM verification occurs trustlessly at the protocol level, and the rollup only needs to prove its custom extensions separately.

This could enable stronger interoperability and pave the way for synchronous composability, in which contracts across different rollups can interact within the same transaction. Yet, it remains a research trajectory, not a deployed feature.

The Jan. 16 post “Combining preconfirmations with based rollups for synchronous composability” and the Feb. 2 post “Synchronous composability between rollups via realtime proving” lay out the design space but don’t represent shipped protocol changes.

Three buckets emerging

If this reframing takes hold, expect rollups to split into clearer categories.