The Ethereum community recently came to the defense of Vitalik Buterin’s vision for Layer 2 (L2) solutions in response to rising criticism claiming that L2s were not aligned with Ethereum’s core principles and diverged from the intended roadmap. Offchain Labs co-founder Steven Goldfeder refuted these claims on social media by revisiting Buterin’s 2020 rollup-centric roadmap. The debate centered around concerns that L2s are deviating from the broader vision laid out for Ethereum. Goldfeder addressed three main criticisms: that L2s are not truly Ethereum because they compete with each other, that L2 tokens and revenue models are misaligned with Ethereum’s values, and that L2s should not support decentralized finance (DeFi) projects.
Goldfeder’s first response targeted the belief that L2s cannot be considered part of Ethereum due to the competition between entities like Arbitrum and Base. He drew on Buterin’s analogy of Ethereum as a collection of “islands” that are unique yet interconnected to argue that having multiple L2s can contribute to the network’s overall robustness and scalability. He also addressed the criticism regarding L2 tokens and revenue models, highlighting that Buterin had explicitly included these features in the 2020 roadmap, showing they were planned components of Ethereum’s ecosystem.
The final criticism Goldfeder addressed was the idea that L2s should not support DeFi projects and instead focus on other applications to preserve Ethereum’s mainnet integrity. However, he pointed out that Buterin had identified DeFi as an expected early adopter of L2 technology, indicating that L2s supporting DeFi was always part of the plan to drive Ethereum’s expansion into more scalable transaction processing. Goldfeder’s thread generated a broader discussion within the Ethereum community, with many users joining in on the conversation. One user questioned the success of building new applications within existing systems, prompting Goldfeder to cite examples like VirtualBox and modern web browsers running applications effectively.
Vitalik Buterin himself joined the conversation, drawing a parallel between modern web browsers and operating systems to support the idea of L2s operating within Ethereum enhancing the ecosystem’s capacity to support diverse and complex applications. This analogy strengthened the argument that L2 solutions are not limiting but instead contribute to the network’s overall development and scalability. The debate around L2 solutions within the Ethereum community reflects ongoing discussions about the network’s evolution, scalability, and alignment with its core principles, with stakeholders like Goldfeder and Buterin playing key roles in shaping the narrative.
