Vitalik Buterin Questions Whether Layer-2s Still Scale Ethereum

Buterin is concerned that many layer-2s have not fully inherited Ethereum’s security or achieved meaningful decentralization. Separately, Coin Metrics reported that low-value stablecoin transfers now account for about 11% of Ethereum transactions and 26% of active addresses after recent upgrades lowered transaction costs.

Vitalik Buterin Challenges Ethereum’s Layer-2 Model

Vitalik Buterin caused a major debate inside the Ethereum ecosystem after publicly reversing his long-held belief that layer-2 networks should serve as the primary path for scaling Ethereum. In a post shared on X, Buterin said that the original vision for layer-2s “no longer makes sense,” and argued that many of these networks have failed to achieve meaningful decentralization or genuinely inherit Ethereum’s security guarantees. 

Layer-2s were designed to process transactions cheaply and at high speed while relying on Ethereum as a secure settlement layer, but Buterin suggested that this promise broke down in practice. In his view, systems that boast high throughput while relying on multisig bridges or weak trust assumptions are not truly scaling Ethereum, even if they run Ethereum-compatible virtual machines.

Buterin’s critique centers on the disconnect between Ethereum’s base layer and many of the layer-2 networks built on top of it. He explained that Ethereum scaling was meant to create block space that is fully secured by the mainnet, ensuring transactions are valid, uncensored, and final under Ethereum’s consensus. When that link is diluted, he argued, the result is effectively a separate system rather than an extension of Ethereum itself. 

As a result, Buterin suggested that layer-2 networks should pivot away from competing on raw scalability and instead focus on specialized niches like privacy-preserving applications, digital identity, finance, social platforms, and AI-driven use cases. This would allow Ethereum’s ecosystem to diversify without compromising the integrity of the base layer.

The comments are a big shift in Ethereum’s technical narrative, which for years positioned layer-2s as the central solution to congestion and high fees. They also revive a long-running internal debate among developers over whether Ethereum should prioritize scaling its own mainnet more aggressively. 

ETH’s price action over the past year (Source: CoinCodex)

Alongside his criticism of layer-2s, Buterin also shared why he believes Ethereum’s mainnet is now better positioned to scale directly. He pointed to recent and upcoming changes, including increases to the gas limit and the development of native rollups, as evidence that Ethereum can boost throughput without outsourcing execution. 

Native rollups differ from traditional rollups by being built directly into Ethereum’s protocol, allowing transaction execution to be verified by Ethereum validators rather than external systems. This approach is expected to become even more powerful once zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine proofs are integrated at the base layer.

Ethereum developers already discussed raising the gas limit from 60 million to 80 million after recent upgrades, which would allow more transactions and smart contract operations to fit into each block. Such changes could materially improve network capacity and help reduce fees during periods of heavy demand. 

Looking further ahead, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake shared a long-term vision in which the network could reach roughly 10,000 transactions per second on the mainnet over the next decade, which is a dramatic increase from today’s levels. Taken together, Buterin’s comments suggest Ethereum’s roadmap is undergoing a strategic pivot, with specific focus on strengthening the base layer.

Stablecoin Dust Floods Ethereum Activity

Meanwhile, Coin Metrics says a sharp rise in low-value stablecoin transfers is reshaping activity on Ethereum, with so-called dusting attacks now estimated to account for roughly 11% of all transactions and about 26% of active addresses on an average day. 

The increase follows Ethereum’s Fusaka upgrade in December, which lowered transaction costs by improving how on-chain data is handled and reducing the expense of posting information from layer-2 networks back to the mainnet. While the upgrade helped make Ethereum cheaper and more accessible, it also created favorable conditions for address poisoning schemes that rely on sending tiny amounts of tokens to large numbers of wallets.

Ethereum has recently been processing more than 2 million transactions per day on average, with activity peaking at nearly 2.9 million in mid-January. Daily active addresses have climbed to around 1.4 million, which is a roughly 60% increase compared with prior norms. 

Coin Metrics attributes a meaningful portion of this surge not to organic usage, but to automated dusting activity involving stablecoins like USDC and USDT. The firm analyzed more than 227 million balance updates for these tokens on Ethereum between November 2025 and January 2026, finding that a large share involved transfers of negligible value.

Median transaction size on Ethereum (Source: CoinMetrics)

According to the analysis, about 43% of observed balance updates involved transfers of less than $1, while 38% were under a single cent. Coin Metrics described these amounts as having “insignificant economic purpose other than wallet seeding,” which is a tactic commonly used in address poisoning attacks. 

Ethereum stablecoin transfer size distribution (Source: CoinMetrics)

The number of addresses holding small “dust” balances—greater than zero but less than one native unit—has grown sharply, consistent with millions of wallets receiving tiny deposits designed to trick users into copying malicious addresses later on. Before the Fusaka upgrade, stablecoin dust accounted for roughly 3% to 5% of Ethereum transactions and about 15% to 20% of active addresses. After the upgrade, those figures jumped to an estimated 10% to 15% of transactions and 25% to 35% of active addresses on a typical day.

Despite the spike in dust-related activity, Coin Metrics explained that the majority of stablecoin usage on Ethereum is still legitimate. The firm found that 57% of balance updates involved transfers above $1, suggesting that most users are still engaging in genuine payments, trading, and settlement activity. Even so, researchers warn that the growing prevalence of dusting attacks increases the risk for everyday users, particularly during periods of heightened network activity and low fees.