Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin on L1 vs. Rollup Prioritization: "It's Premature to Declare Victory"

In a recent social media exchange with Bankless founder David Hoffman, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin addressed the ongoing debate about prioritizing L1 improvements over the "rollup-centric roadmap." Hoffman had suggested that the "rollup-centric roadmap is 'done'" and that future optimization should focus on L1.

Buterin disagreed, stating, "I don't think that's a priority issue. The next step for DA is peerdas, and the people working on that are almost completely disjoint from the people working on SSF or EVM execution improvements. I do think it's premature to declare victory on the 'rollup-centric roadmap'."

He went on to say, "We are only 1.3x away from hitting full blob utilization (21600 blobs/day). We need to get peerdas launched, and start scaling securely while improving L1."

Hoffman countered that increasing L1 block times would also increase block space (blobspace) supply, suggesting a synergistic approach to focus on both L1 and L2 simultaneously. He argued that focusing solely on DA only benefits L2.

Buterin explained that while reducing slot times without other changes would indeed increase block space, both gas/blob and bandwidth limitations ultimately restrict both. He emphasized that "bandwidth and latency are two separate issues."

He acknowledged that reducing L1 slot times is "worth discussing," but cautioned against potential negative impacts on individual and geographically dispersed stakers.