Written by: Techub News Compiled

Introduction

At the closing ceremony of the Zugrama event held in Zug, Switzerland, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (V God) delivered a keynote speech on the future of Ethereum scaling. This speech was based on a blog post he had published earlier that day, centered on arguing the necessity of increasing the Ethereum base layer (Layer 1, L1) transaction capacity (Gas Limit) in a future dominated by Layer 2 (L2). With discussions on the ETH Dencun upgrade introducing Blob transactions, future upgrade plans like Petra and Osaka, and escalating topics like L2 interoperability, Vitalik Buterin (V God) aimed to provide the community with a rational analytical framework based on concrete data and scenarios to guide future technological decisions.

Summary

• Even if most daily transactions migrate to L2, users will still need to interact directly with L1 due to critical scenarios such as censorship resistance, cross-L2 asset transfers, and large-scale exits from L2.
• Mathematical modeling estimates that to support Ethereum reaching Facebook-level user scale (about 3.1 billion) and ensuring that these critical interactions are low-cost (such as below $1), L1's throughput needs to be increased by approximately 6 times.
• The scaling decisions must be based on a clear definition of the resources (storage, computation, bandwidth) required for different types of nodes (validators, block builders, etc.) to strike a balance between increasing capacity and maintaining decentralization.
• Future discussions should be more "rigorous," shifting from abstract debates to quantitative analysis, specifying what concrete guarantees L1 needs to provide for L2 and users, as well as acceptable cost boundaries for this.

The Four Core Scenario Values of L1 Scaling

Vitalik Buterin (V God) clearly stated that his core argument is: in a world where L2 dominates most application activities, increasing L1's Gas limit (i.e., scaling) still holds significant value. He supports this viewpoint by analyzing specific scenarios where users might need to interact directly with L1, accompanied by mathematical derivation of costs and capacity needs.

The first key scenario is censorship resistance. Vitalik Buterin (V God) emphasized that censorship resistance is not just theoretical; it must be an affordable reality for users. For instance, when users have positions in a DeFi protocol and the market is rapidly volatile, they may need to urgently add collateral. If a transaction is delayed by even five minutes due to censorship, it may face liquidation risks. L2 typically provides censorship resistance assurance through a "forced inclusion" mechanism, where users can submit transactions directly through L1, and the L2 sequencer must process them within a certain delay (e.g., Optimism has a 30-minute window). However, users must pay L1's Gas fees to use this assurance. He estimated that currently, the cost of bypassing L2 censorship for a transaction is about $4.5. If the goal is to reduce the cost of responding to attacks to below $1, L1's capacity needs to expand by about 4.5 times.

The second scenario is cross-L2 asset transfers. For commonly used tokens (like mainstream ERC-20s), users can transfer assets cross-chain through indirect methods, such as intent protocols. However, for low-value assets, especially unique NFTs, users must transfer assets directly through L1 since there are no market makers holding identical copies. Calculations show that the current cost of a single NFT cross-L2 transfer ranges from 28 cents to $13 (depending on various assumptions). Assuming Ethereum user scale reaches Facebook levels (3.1 billion), and each person does one NFT cross-chain transfer per month, L1's capacity needs to increase by approximately 6 times—this is under the ideal condition that L1 is used solely for this purpose.

The third scenario involves large-scale exits from L2. This is one of the fundamental differences between L2 and other chains: if L2 fails, users need to be able to withdraw their assets back to L1. Therefore, it is essential to assess whether all users can afford the cost of exiting within a week. Calculations indicate that the ideal cost for a single exit currently ranges from 28 cents to $4.5. However, if everyone exits simultaneously, Gas fees will surge, demanding L1 to have sufficient capacity to handle peak pressure, potentially requiring an expansion of 1 to 9 times.

The fourth scenario pertains to issuing assets on L1. Vitalik Buterin (V God) noted that issuing ERC-20 tokens on L1 is actually safer than doing so on L2. If L2 undergoes a malicious governance upgrade, attackers can infinitely mint tokens on that L2 and pollute the entire ecosystem. Currently, issuing a token like Railgun on L1 costs about $60, while issuing a meme coin like Mudang even consumes Gas worth over $100, indicating there is still room for optimization. For applications that need to create assets frequently (like prediction markets), if the goal is to create markets at a cost of less than 25 cents, L1's capacity needs to increase by approximately 18 times.

Additionally, he briefly mentioned scenarios such as key storage wallets and L2 proof submissions. For the latter, the annual cost for each L2 submitting zero-knowledge proofs may reach up to $50 million; even with aggregation protocol optimization, it might still require $1 million/year. Vitalik Buterin (V God) believes that the ideal target should be close to $100,000/year, which also points to the need for resource scaling regarding L1 data availability.

Summarizing these scenarios, Vitalik Buterin (V God) proposed a macro calculation: assuming Ethereum has 3.1 billion users and each person needs to interact with L1 at least once a year (a very conservative estimate), it implies that 3.1 billion L1 transactions need to be processed annually. Since there are approximately 31 million seconds in a year, this means L1 needs about 100 transactions/second throughput capability. Currently, Ethereum L1 operates at about 15 transactions/second, so it needs to scale by approximately 6 times. If the interaction frequency is higher, the scaling demand will be even greater.

Towards More Rigor in Scaling and Decentralization Trade-offs

After arguing for the value of L1 scaling, Vitalik Buterin (V God) shifted the topic to the classic challenges faced in achieving scaling: how to balance scaling with decentralization and security? He pointed out that historically, the community has not simply raised the Gas limit 100-fold out of concerns for decentralization. However, past debates often fall into the abstract opposition of "scaling is needed" versus "decentralization is important," lacking specific quantitative metrics, allowing the same arguments to repeat under Gas limits of 3 million, 30 million, or even 300 million.

He believes there is an urgent need to more rigorously define the expected technical characteristics for Ethereum L1 nodes. The community needs to clarify: what type of nodes are we optimizing for? What specific and acceptable demands do we have regarding different types of nodes (such as validator nodes, block builders, full archival nodes) in terms of storage, computation, bandwidth, etc.?

He conducted an in-depth analysis using "stateless clients" as an example. Currently, a full Ethereum node requires about 1 to 1.5 TB of storage space. After the implementation of EIP-4444, this requirement might drop to about 500 GB. Stateless client technologies (such as Verkle trees or updated binary schemes) aim to allow validators (like staking nodes) to require almost no local storage, validating simply by downloading block and witness data. This would lead to a differentiation in node requirements: validators' storage needs approaching zero, while block builders may see increased storage and computation requirements as Gas limits rise.

This raises a critical question: is this differentiation acceptable? Vitalik Buterin (V God) noted that people have vastly different intuitions on this. Some believe that as long as validation is sufficiently decentralized, it is acceptable for block building to be relatively centralized; others contend that decentralized block building is equally vital. The community requires clearer consensus on these attributes.

Another dimension that requires rigorous thought is censorship resistance and network conditions. Currently, Ethereum assumes an internet that is relatively accessible and not heavily subject to censorship. However, the future internet environment may worsen. He proposed a thought-provoking perspective: relying on computational resources might be safer than depending on bandwidth. This is because bandwidth connections might be severed or restricted for various reasons, whereas personal computing hardware is relatively harder to seize. This perspective slightly diverges from recent optimization directions (where stateless clients tend to trade bandwidth for computation), yet the introduction of zero-knowledge proofs could simultaneously reduce both bandwidth and computation needs. This further emphasizes the necessity of making technical trade-offs under clearly defined optimization goals.

Vitalik Buterin (V God) concluded that by conducting more rigorous quantitative analyses from two directions (user demand scenarios and node resource constraints), the community would be better positioned to answer: how much can L1's Gas limit be safely increased? What changes can L1 make to achieve this increase, and which ones cannot? And what expectations and requirements does Ethereum need to set for its L2? He anticipates that this will be one of the central discussion topics in the Ethereum ecosystem in the coming year.

Community Interaction: From Regenerative Medicine to Decentralized Education

During the Q&A and sharing session following the speech, participants of Zugrama eagerly spoke up to share their experiences during this six-week temporary community and the projects they are building, showcasing the vitality of the intersection between crypto technology and diverse fields.

Several participants mentioned projects initiated or deepened during the Zugrama period. A doctor from India shared his ongoing exploration of a universal organ regeneration project, aiming to provide universal solutions for regenerating various organs by leveraging developmental biological signals and extracellular matrix scaffolds. Vitalik Buterin (V God) expressed curiosity about this and took the opportunity to ask attendees about their fields of work, discovering connections to biology, Ethereum, software, hardware, and more. He particularly encouraged the development of open-source hardware and shared a success story from his bio-funding project that developed open-source vaccines in India at a very low cost.

Other project ideas varied widely:

• On-chain programmable trust layer: A participant proposed that traditional trust from the real world (such as kinship, community) is difficult to map onto the blockchain. They are designing a model based on game theory (similar to the repeated prisoner's dilemma) combined with social graphing to attempt to create a quantifiable, natively on-chain trust network to reshape identity systems, DAOs, and grant mechanisms.
• ZK development tools: A developer of zero-knowledge proofs introduced a "state machine wrapper" aimed at lowering the barriers to ZK application development, allowing ordinary smart contract developers to connect to proof networks without a deep understanding of ZK details, just by writing business logic. Vitalik Buterin (V God) affirmed the importance of standardization, arguing that concise languages need to be defined for both the virtual machine's internals and the proof system itself.
• Fiat on-ramps and off-ramps solutions: In response to the need in regions like Latin America for large amounts of cash to be converted into cryptocurrency, a team is building a peer-to-peer offline cash-crypto exchange market and is exploring how to establish a reputation system to secure offline transactions.
• AI-powered education: Multiple young builders shared their projects that utilize AI agents to generate animated videos, automate teaching processes, and develop hardware learning kits, aiming to address issues like uneven teacher resources and rigid educational systems while exploring the future of decentralized education. Vitalik Buterin (V God) strongly agreed, recognizing enhanced educational efficiency as a significant global opportunity.
• On-chain scientific experiments: Participants specifically mentioned "microbiome" experiments conducted within the community, believing that this community-initiated, connecting researchers, funders, and participants in a "deinstitutionalized" scientific model represents a new paradigm for future research and has attracted interest for similar "Zu" (Zuzalu, akin to the concept of temporary cities) communities.

Furthermore, some participants used POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol) to capture numerous moments from Zugrama, creating a dataset of community activities on-chain. The entire sharing session was filled with affirmations of community collaboration, knowledge crossover, and active creation. At last, Vitalik Buterin (V God) inquired about the interest in establishing more permanent community spaces, receiving positive responses. The event concluded with a recitation of a poem about decentralized dreams.

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