Ethereum founder Vitalik on the path to scalability: prioritize bandwidth over latency, why L2 is still essential

【CryptoWorld】Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently shared his views on the direction of blockchain scalability on social media. He believes that instead of solely pursuing low latency, it is more practical to prioritize increasing bandwidth.

According to Vitalik’s explanation, through technologies like PeerDAS (Peer-to-Peer Data Availability Sampling) and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), Ethereum could theoretically achieve thousands of times of scalability. It sounds very appealing, but the problem is—latency bottlenecks are not something that technology alone can solve. The physical limitations of the speed of light and node distribution are real constraints.

So realistically speaking, Ethereum might reduce latency to around 2-4 seconds, which is already a relatively optimistic expectation. Vitalik also emphasized a key positioning issue: “Ethereum is the heartbeat of the world, not the world’s game server.” This succinct statement means Ethereum aims to be a financial-grade settlement layer, not one that requires millisecond-level interaction.

For applications that truly need ultra-fast interactions, the solution is clear—use off-chain components or Layer 2 networks (L2s). This also explains why, even if Ethereum itself is highly scalable, L2 solutions will continue to exist and play a role rather than being completely replaced.