Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined a multi-pronged strategy to scale the Ethereum ecosystem by fostering growth in layer-2 (L2) solutions, advancing blob scaling and reinforcing Ether’s role as the ecosystem’s primary economic driver.
In a blog post, Buterin suggested that Ether (ETH) should be cemented “as the primary asset of the greater (L1 + L2) Ethereum economy,” and that L2 networks should be encouraged to support ETH with a percentage of fees. He also called for raising the blob count, a technical enhancement that increases transaction capacity.
While L2 networks have achieved significant milestones in improving transaction fees and scaling capacities, Buterin backed faster adoption of these solutions and greater interoperability among L2s.
He argued that Ethereum’s future sustainability depends on this approach, which ties together ecosystem growth, technical standard upgrades and ETH’s role as the primary economic driver.
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L2 growth for scalability
L2 networks operate on top of Ethereum’s main layer-1 blockchain and have significantly impacted user transaction fees and throughput.
Despite their success, Buterin emphasized a need for further adoption and interoperability between L2s, suggesting that applications and wallets must make the ecosystem more unified.
The Ethereum co-founder added that L2 networks are currently “a far cry” from the experiments they were in 2019, but advocated for standardized crosschain messaging and faster deposit and withdrawal times.
“Using Ethereum should feel like using a single ecosystem, not 34 different blockchains,” he said. “We should think explicitly about economics of ETH.”
“We need to make sure that ETH continues to accrue value even in an L2-heavy world, ideally solving for a variety of models of how value accrual happens.”
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Blob scaling for increased transaction capacity
As part of his strategy to unify the Ethereum ecosystem, Buterin said the network should be more willing to deprioritize features that are not blobs and consider “more radical approaches” that attain more blobs faster.
Blobs are a tool that help Ethereum process more transactions at a lower cost without sacrificing the decentralization or security of the network, allowing it to scale beyond its usual means.
“With EIP-4844, we now have 3 blobs per slot, or a data bandwidth of 384 kB per slot,” Buterin said. “With Pectra, scheduled for release in March, we plan to double this to 6 blobs per slot.” Buterin added:
“When we get to 2D sampling, we can reach 128 blobs per slot, and then keep going further. With this, and improvements to data compression, we can reach 100,000 RPS onchain.”
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Risks of decentralization without utility
Buterin highlighted the need to continue building Ethereum’s technical and social properties and utility. He warned that a lack of utility would create a “decel” community that raises fears “but has no position to actually offer a better alternative.”
Conversely, he cautioned against sacrificing Ethereum’s foundational principles for utility, likening it to “the Wall Street greed-is-good mentality that many of us came here precisely to escape.”
Despite his push for inclusivity and a collaborative approach to improving the Ethereum network, Buterin recently said that he remains solely in control of the Ethereum Foundation’s (EF) leadership.
Buterin said that the decision remains his to determine who heads the EF until planned reforms to create a “proper board” are established in the foundation.
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