Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, is urging a shift in mindset towards building layer-2 (L2) decentralized applications and solutions following the successful completion of the Dencun hard fork. Speaking at the ETH Global’s Pragma London event on March 14, Buterin praised the network upgrade, which allows L2 rollups to achieve scalability by reducing costs associated with submitting cryptographic proofs to Ethereum’s base layer. The event attracted over 500 attendees and Buterin’s presence was a major highlight of the day’s program. With Dencun’s smooth mainnet launch, there was a palpable sense of curiosity about Ethereum’s future plans from one of its key founders.
Reflecting on his well-known roadmap for Ethereum, Buterin discussed how many of the milestones he had set out were primarily engineering tasks, some of which were realized with the completion of Dencun. The hard fork included Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-4844), which altered how Ethereum rollups store data on the mainnet. Several layer-2 rollups aggregate and process transactions off-chain, submitting a summary proof of these transactions to the Ethereum blockchain. EIP-4844 introduced blob space as a replacement for using call data for storage, allowing rollups to add cheaper data to blocks. Proto-danksharding, named after the researchers who proposed EIP-4844, enables rollups to send and attach data blobs to blocks, which are not accessible to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and are automatically deleted after 18 days.
Buterin emphasized that Ethereum is in a phase of change and that its ecosystem needs to adopt a new approach to make a significant impact on the internet and traditional financial systems. He described the first decade of Ethereum as inwardly focused, with the ecosystem primarily developing for its own purposes. The Dencun hard fork has played a role in shifting Ethereum’s focus away from layer 1 and towards layer 2. Buterin also expects Ethereum’s base layer to transition from rapid change to a period of maintenance. While he acknowledges that there will still be changes to the base layer, he encourages a mindset that prioritizes L2 and application developers.
Buterin highlighted the abundance of tools available for building decentralized applications (DApps) in the Ethereum ecosystem, with zero-knowledge proofs being one of the most important. He urged developers to adopt an “Ethereum 2.0” approach, utilizing modern tools and protocols like L2 rollups to access improved privacy, security, and performance benefits.