Vitalik Buterin Addresses Layer 2 Usability Criticism

Vitalik Buterin addressed the criticism surrounding Ethereum’s Layer 2 user experience, often viewed as fragmented and complex. He stated, “Ethereum people should not feel a need to justify the inadequacies of the present” while building for the future.

On Monday, Camila Russo, founder of the DeFi media platform The Defiant, expressed her love for Ethereum and its community on X but stressed the importance of acknowledging the poor experience of Layer 2. She stated, “If you're a crypto native, it's bad. More than bad, it's PAINFUL. That's if you already use crypto. If you're a newbie… it's unacceptable. Simply unusable.”

Transacting on Ethereum often involves navigating multiple Layer 2s, making usability complicated. For instance, users may need to mint assets on one chain, farm airdrops on another, and receive stablecoins across different chains. Russo emphasized that seamless interaction across all Layer 2s and the mainnet is vital for improving user experience.

While technical solutions like account abstraction are available, they remain largely unimplemented by wallets and protocols, hindering their effectiveness. Russo remarked, “Improving Ethereum UX will require cross-ecosystem coordination. That's already hard. But it's going to be impossible if everyone deludes themselves by saying, ‘It's not that bad.’ Listen, it's bad.”

In a response early Tuesday, Buterin argued that the need to justify current inadequacies arises from feeling “powerless” to build the future. He reiterated, “But we are building the future,” referencing his previous essay outlining a potential roadmap for cross-Layer 2 interoperability.

Improvements in cross-Layer 2 interoperability aim to unify the Ethereum ecosystem by minimizing reliance on centralized components and facilitating easier cross-chain transactions. Proposed solutions include standardizing chain-specific addresses, payment requests, and keystore wallets to allow assets to move across Layer 2s more seamlessly while reducing gas costs.

For successful cross-Layer 2 interactions, both technical and community collaboration are required to establish consistent standards, ultimately leading to a unified experience across Ethereum's Layer 1 and Layer 2s. “If we are serious about the idea that Layer 2s are part of Ethereum, we need to make using the Layer 2 ecosystem feel like using a unified Ethereum ecosystem.”

‘The Surge’

The section highlighted by Buterin referred to his prior blog on “The Surge,” which is part two of a six-part essay series exploring possible futures for the Ethereum protocol.

In The Surge, Buterin pointed out that the rollup-centric roadmap, combining sharding and Layer 2 protocols, will continue to be the network’s primary scaling strategy but still faces unique challenges. He stated, “Our task is to bring the rollup-centric roadmap to completion and solve these problems while preserving the robustness and decentralization that makes the Ethereum Layer 1 special.”

Buterin underscored the need for significant scaling of Ethereum, aiming for a capacity of 100,000 transactions per second across Layer 1 and Layer 2s, while also exploring additional solutions for advancing data availability sampling and enhancing Ethereum’s base layer.