Ethereum’s L2 Identity Crisis: Vitalik Says Most Rollups Need a New Job

Quick TL;DR — fees fell, the playbook changed

Ethereum got cheaper and chattier than the 2020 playbook expected, and that has left a lot of Layer‑2 chains asking, “So… what am I even for?” Vitalik’s recent thinking basically says the old idea that every L2 would be a neat, trustless little “branded shard” of Ethereum is no longer a safe bet. That doesn’t mean abandoning L2s — it means giving them clearer job descriptions.

Why the old rollup plan is unraveling

Back in 2020, gas prices were a real crisis and the solution was: rollups everywhere. The dream was simple — offload work to L2s, keep data on the main chain, and let users live happily on cheaper layers. Fast forward to today: base‑layer fees have dropped a lot and the mainnet can handle far more execution than people assumed back then. That shifts the economics and the expectations.

There’s also a security reality check. The ecosystem now talks about stages of decentralization — from “training wheels” setups that still require trust in operators, up to fully code‑enforced systems with no discretionary upgrades. Most of the value locked in L2s sits in the middle: not entirely trustless, not purely custodial either. Only a sliver of activity lives on what you’d call truly hands‑off, immutable rollups.

Add in another kicker: many of the biggest rollups still have upgrade discretion and governance levers. Some teams even say they might never remove those controls because customers — especially regulated or institutional users — explicitly want them. That’s a valid product choice, but it means those chains aren’t trying to be “Ethereum scaling” in the pure, trustless sense that early roadmaps assumed.

The new job descriptions for L2s (three buckets)

Instead of pretending all L2s will be clones competing on price, we should treat them like specialist apps with different missions. Think of this as L2 job titles rather than a single career path.

1) Settlement champions: These are the projects still trying to maximize Ethereum security inheritance — minimal discretionary governance, proofs and escape hatches that actually work, the whole “no training wheels” vibe. If your rollup wants to custody ETH or native tokens, this is the minimum direction you should aim for.

2) Regulated/controlled environments: These rollups are built for compliance, permissioning, or institutions that need hands‑on control. They may deliberately keep upgrade paths and governance levers for legal or operational reasons. That’s fine as long as they’re honest about it — marketed control, not fake decentralization.

3) Specialized chains: Privacy rollups, ultra‑low‑latency sequencers for trading, social or identity layers with different state models — these don’t need to be EVM lookalikes or financial playgrounds. Their value is being the best at a specific thing users can’t easily get elsewhere.

There’s promising research toward making some of the technical glue easier — ideas like native verification primitives that let the base layer verify certain proofs natively, or synchronous composability so contracts across rollups can talk to each other within the same transaction. These are neat and important, but they’re research items, not shipping features yet.

What this means for users and builders

For users: stop assuming every L2 inherits full Ethereum robustness. Check the trust model. Look for escape hatches, who controls upgrades, and whether proof systems can be overridden. Wallets and UIs will need to make these differences obvious — trust assumptions should be a product label, not hidden fine print.

For builders: “cheap EVM” is becoming table stakes. If you want to stand out, pick a specialty — privacy, crazy throughput, latency for markets, app‑specific VMs, or compliance tools for institutions. And be honest about the tradeoffs; markets and users are better off with straight talk than marketing gloss.

For the ecosystem: expect a re‑tiering rather than a single L2 revolution. Some rollups will double down on maximal Ethereum security, others will be built around control and regulation, and the rest will chase niche features and novel use cases. That diversity isn’t failure — it’s a market finding useful roles.

Short version: L1 got cheaper and more capable, so L2s have to earn their place by specialization or by delivering genuine, verifiable security. The job description changed — and that’s actually a little less dramatic and a lot more useful than it sounds.