Vitalik Buterin Shares Ethereum Scaling Strategy in 2025
Scaling Ethereum L1 and L2s in 2025 and beyondhttps://t.co/T36dnaEYXj
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 24, 2025
The Rise of Layer-2s and the Challenges They Face
Vitalik believes that Ethereum's future scalability will rely heavily on Layer-2 (L2) protocols. Current Layer-2 solutions have achieved significant success in protecting billions of dollars in user transactions, increasing Ethereum's processing capacity by 17x, and reducing costs accordingly.
L2s have made great progress, and this is a testament to Ethereum's ecosystem and development philosophy working in action. pic.twitter.com/CGVwBYUemj
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 24, 2025
These achievements are not only a testament to the technical prowess, but also a clear demonstration of the value of Ethereum’s decentralized approach to scaling. Instead of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) having to reach out to each user on its own, there are now dozens of independent organizations willing to do so on EF’s behalf. Thanks to these efforts, Ethereum is moving closer to “escape velocity” – a state where the network is strong enough to sustain itself and grow without external support.
Despite the impressive success, Vitalik pointed out two major challenges that Layer-2 is facing:
Scale: The temporary data storage space dedicated to Layer-2 (blob space) is currently only enough to meet the needs of existing applications and the number of Layer-2s, but will be overwhelmed for future expansion.
Heterogeneity: Current Layer-2s are built by different organizations, using their own standards, leading to interoperability issues and inconsistent experiences for both developers and users.
Solution to future challenges
Scale
The first issue of scaling is an obvious technical challenge, and the solution is also relatively obvious: increase the number of blobs in each block on Ethereum. Currently, with EIP-4844, each block supports 3 blobs (about 384 kB of data), corresponding to about 210 transactions/second. However, to meet future needs, the number of blobs needs to increase significantly. Therefore, Ethereum needs to undergo a number of updates in the near future, including:
· Pectra (March 2025): Expected to increase to 6 blobs per block, double the current time.
· PeerDAS: This technology can increase the number of blobs by 2-3 times compared to the current one.
2D Sampling: When this technology is achieved, Ethereum can process up to 128 blobs per block, equivalent to 100,000 transactions/second.
All of the above ideas are on the development roadmap set out before 2025. To speed up the process, Vitalik emphasized the need to focus on prioritizing blob-related solutions, de-prioritizing unrelated and low-impact features.
Vitalik also proposed a more flexible approach, which is to allow validators to adjust the number of blobs they can process, similar to how they can currently adjust the gas limit. This would make it easier for the network to adapt to new technological advances without having to wait for major changes like hard forks.
The ETH founder also believes that prioritizing Layer-1 over Layer-2 would be a wrong choice, so he wants to focus more on solving the current shortcomings of Layer-2, still firmly believing that this is the best solution for Ethereum's future scaling problem.
We could give up on L2s and try to do 2016-era-style L1 sharding. But this would be a mistake.
Instead, we should double down on our work on interoperability, ZK-EVMs, etc, and get the benefits of independent innovation and a unified Ethereum at the same time.
This means: pic.twitter.com/TatwiGjAAO
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 24, 2025
We could give up on L2s and try to do 2016-era-style L1 sharding. But this would be a mistake.
Instead, we should double down on our work on interoperability, ZK-EVMs, etc, and get the benefits of independent innovation and a unified Ethereum at the same time.
This means: pic.twitter.com/TatwiGjAAO
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 24, 2025
On Heterogeneity
The second issue is that heterogeneity is more complicated because it involves coordination between multiple parties in the Ethereum ecosystem. With the growing number of Layer-2s, creating a common standard for blockchains to interact effectively is a difficult problem. The goal is to make it as easy to transfer assets between Layer-2s and use applications between them as if they were different "shards" on the same blockchain. Some solutions proposed by Vitalik include:
Chain-specific addresses: Design addresses on Layer-2s that not only contain information about the account (similar to current wallet addresses), but also include information about the chain that the account belongs to. ERC-3770 is the original proposal to build this system, adding a chain identifier to the wallet address to clarify its origin.
Standardized cross-chain bridges and message passing: There needs to be a common standard for verifying and transmitting messages between L2s, relying solely on the L2 proof system without trusting any intermediaries. An ecosystem based on multi-signature bridges is unacceptable, as it goes against the decentralization principle set by Ethereum.
Speed up deposit/withdrawal times: "Native" messages can be processed in minutes (or even just in one block), instead of weeks. This requires faster ZK-EVM proof systems and more efficient proof aggregation.
Synchronous reading of data from L1 to L2: Features like L1SLOAD or REMOTESTATICCALL will increase the interoperability between L2s and L1s and better support for storage wallets like keystore wallets.
Additionally, Buterin said that a faster approach to scaling Ethereum would be to remove Layer-2 and do everything directly on Layer-1 by significantly increasing the gas limit, regardless of whether it is on a single shard or across multiple shards.
However, this approach would undermine the core values of Ethereum's current community, as collaborating with Layer-2 developers has proven to be superior in promoting research, development, and building a decentralized ecosystem. Therefore, instead of abandoning the above approach, Ethereum needs to continue to focus on scaling through Layer-2, while ensuring that L2 solutions can reach their full potential.
Strategies to Optimize ETH Value
In addition to strategies to expand Ethereum through Layer-2, Vitalik Buterin also proposed a strategy to maximize the value of ETH, turning this token into a "triple-point" asset that meets the following 3 criteria:
1. Capital Asset: ETH needs to affirm its role as a foundation in the entire ecosystem, from Layer-1 to Layer-2. The key strategy is to promote the community to use ETH as the main collateral asset in DeFi. This will help ETH become the "blood vessel" of decentralized financial activities, thereby stimulating demand and increasing value.
2. Consumable goods: Like gasoline, ETH needs to be considered the "energy source" that runs all activities on Ethereum. Layer-2 solutions can contribute to the value of ETH by sharing transaction fees with Layer-1. This fee can be used to burn ETH, stake long-term, or fund community projects. This mechanism both ensures the central role of ETH and promotes the sustainable development of the entire ecosystem.
3. Store of Value: Thanks to the deflation mechanism, ETH can completely become a safe store of value like gold. Expanding the number of blobs and optimizing blob fees will allow Ethereum to burn hundreds of thousands of ETH per year, increasing scarcity and boosting the value of this token in the long term.
In addition to the scaling strategy, making the value of ETH one of Ethereum's focuses in 2025 can be seen as Vitalik Buterin's response to the community's criticism of the Ethereum Foundation, with the conflict boiling to a climax in recent days.
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