Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed a clear preference for prioritizing rapid withdrawal times—on the order of one hour—in Ethereum’s Layer 2 (L2) scaling solutions over the completion of second-phase rollups. According to a report by PANews, the current standard practice of imposing week-long withdrawal delays hampers user experience and inflates cross-chain transaction costs. For instance, intent-based bridging solutions such as ERC-7683 require liquidity providers to lock up their capital for an entire week, driving up cross-chain fees and compelling users to adopt less-secure multisignature schemes—an outcome that contradicts the foundational goals of L2 protocols.
Buterin has proposed a hybrid 2-of-3 proof system that integrates zero-knowledge (ZK), optimistic proof (OP), and trusted execution environment (TEE) technologies. This architecture aims to enable near-instant verification and robust production-level validation, allowing time savings secured by two of the three proof methods without waiting for the full maturation of ZK technology. This approach reflects a practical evolution in Buterin’s longstanding commitment to decentralization and censorship resistance, as he now places greater emphasis on swift finality and user experience within the L2 ecosystem.
This shift aligns with Ethereum’s broader “rollup-centric” strategy, which envisions Layer 1 serving primarily as a unified settlement and liquidity hub. By fostering strong network effects, this approach intends to create a competitive advantage for Ethereum’s ecosystem vis-à-vis other blockchains. Market demands increasingly prioritize usability and performance, even if that comes at the expense of some decentralization ideals, steering Ethereum’s development toward more commercially viable and competitive directions.
Nonetheless, a critical challenge remains in advancing ZK technology to meet these user experience and infrastructure goals while controlling costs. Although ZK proofs have seen rapid innovation, their current computational expense—often exceeding 500,000 gas units per proof—limits submission frequency to intervals of several hours, falling short of the 12-second finality target. Achieving this benchmark will require revolutionary progress in aggregation techniques.
The underlying rationale is that frequent proof submissions by individual rollups are prohibitively costly, but aggregating proofs from multiple rollups into a single batch could render the per-slot cost for 12-second finality manageable. This development would open a new technical frontier in Layer 2 competition: projects advancing ZK proof efficiency could thrive, while those relying solely on optimistic rollups might struggle to maintain strategic direction in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Source: binance
