Recently, one of the most important speeches by Vitalik Buterin in recent years was heard. It's not about the 'cancellation' of L2, but a clear signal: the time of 'just cheap gas' is over.
Why is the narrative changing?
1. The promise of decentralization has not been fulfilled. Many large L2s are still controlled by multisigs and councils, which contradicts the spirit of Ethereum.
2. The base layer (L1) is not given up. After The Merge and the implementation of blobs (data sharding), the Ethereum mainnet scales more efficiently than anyone thought. Fees are at a 4-year low.
3. The question of value. If Ethereum itself becomes cheaper, why would a user switch to Arbitrum or Optimism just for a transaction?
What does this mean in practice?
· For L2 projects (Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync): The marketing 'we scale Ethereum' no longer works. The priority is a unique feature: built-in privacy, specialization for AI agents, ultra-fast games, and their own tech stack.
· For Ethereum: Accelerating the move towards 'native rollups' - where L2 functions are built directly into the base layer protocol. ZK-EVM is the next logical step.
· For investors: The valuation of L2 tokens will depend less on the 'scaling narrative' and more on real innovations and capturing their niche. This is a period of stress testing.
Conclusion: This is not the end of L2. This is the end of their 'teenage' phase. The ecosystem is maturing, and the time has come for true specialization and competition for users not on price, but on uniqueness.
Those who adapt will survive. The others may remain an anachronism.
