Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has announced that he will change the way he discusses layer 2 (L2) projects starting next year.
In a September 12 post, Buterin said that he would only publicly acknowledge L2s that had reached at least Stage 1 in their decentralization efforts, regardless of his investment.
He said:
“I take this seriously. Starting next year, I plan to only publicly mention L2 (on blogs, talks, etc.) and give a ‘maybe short grace period’ to really interesting new projects. It doesn’t matter if I invested in them or if you’re my friend. If it’s not L1, it’s screwed.”
Buterin outlined the criteria for a Phase 1+ rollup. According to him, the network needs a 75% consensus of the committee to invalidate the proof system, and at least 26% of the committee members are independent of the rollup.
Buterin said his request was reasonable and necessary for network security. He said:
“Phase 1 (75% threshold for the council to invalidate the proof system, 26% of the council must be outside the rollup team) is a very reasonable intermediate milestone. My multisig hasn’t had a single liveness failure in years, and 26% is even more so.”
The co-founder of Ethereum concluded that “the era of glorified multisig rollups is over. The era of cryptographic trust has arrived.”
Criticism of two-layer networks
Buterin’s current stance comes as the Ethereum layer-2 network has recently come under fire for its centralized structure.
Last month, Cyber Capital’s Justin Bonds raised concerns that these networks are centralized, making them risky and potentially allowing users to steal their funds.
Buterin countered, however, that a highly decentralized L2 solution would not be able to take users’ funds without reaching a strong consensus.
Meanwhile, the debate comes as Layer 2 networks on Ethereum proliferate, including Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, and zkSync. Already, more than 80% of Ethereum transactions occur on L2 solutions, and there are growing signs that higher adoption will accelerate development.