After careful consideration of @VitalikButerin's latest statements regarding the rapid withdrawal of L2, I find it quite interesting. In simple terms: he believes that achieving quick withdrawals within one hour is more important than reaching Stage 2. The logic behind this shift in priority is worth deep reflection: 1) The one-week withdrawal waiting period has indeed become a significant issue in practical applications, not only resulting in poor user experience but also significantly increasing cross-chain costs. For instance, with intent-based bridging solutions like ERC-7683, liquidity providers have to bear a week of capital occupation costs, which directly raises cross-chain fees. As a result, users are forced to choose to trust multi-signature solutions with weaker assumptions, which goes against the original intention of L2. Therefore, Vitalik proposed a 2-of-3 hybrid proof system (ZK+OP+TEE), where ZK and TEE can provide immediacy, and both TEE and OP have sufficient production verification. Theoretically, any two systems can ensure security, thus avoiding the time cost of simply waiting for ZK technology to mature completely. 2) Additionally, Vitalik's new statement gives the impression that he has become more pragmatic? From previously being a youthful idealist full of "decentralization crusades" and "anti-censorship" rhetoric, he has now transformed into a pragmatic figure directly providing hard metrics: one-hour withdrawals, twelve-second finality, everything has become straightforward and brutal. Previously, everyone was focused on the degree of decentralization in Stage 2, but now V God directly states that quick withdrawals are more important, which effectively re-prioritizes the entire L2 landscape. This is actually paving the way for the ultimate form of the "Rollup-Centric" grand strategy, allowing Ethereum L1 to truly become a unified settlement layer and liquidity center. Once quick withdrawals and cross-chain aggregation are achieved, it will become significantly more challenging for other public chains to compete with the Ethereum ecosystem. The reason little V is doing this is that the market has already voted with its feet, indicating that it does not care about the technical slogans of decentralization but rather focuses on experience and efficiency. This shift from "ideal-driven" to "result-oriented" reflects the entire Ethereum ecosystem's evolution towards a more commercial and competitive direction. 3) The question arises: to achieve the long-term goals of practical experience and infrastructure construction, the Ethereum ecosystem is likely to focus on the maturity and cost control of ZK technology in the near future. From the current situation, although ZK technology is progressing rapidly, cost remains a real constraint. A ZK proof costing over 500k gas means that, in the short term, only hourly submission frequencies can be achieved. To realize the ultimate goal of twelve seconds, breakthroughs in aggregation technology will still be necessary. The logic here is clear: the cost of frequently submitting proofs for a single Rollup is too high, but if the proofs of N Rollups can be aggregated into one, spreading the cost across each slot (12s) becomes economically feasible. This also presents a new technical route for the L2 competitive landscape; those L2 projects that can achieve breakthroughs in ZK proof optimization may find their footing, while those still stubbornly pursuing Optimism's optimistic proofs are likely to lose their direction.
vitalik.eth
vitalik.eth7.8. klo 00.29
Amazing to see so many major L2s now at stage 1. The next goal we should shoot for is, in my view, fast (<1h) withdrawal times, enabled by validity (aka ZK) proof systems. I consider this even more important than stage 2. Fast withdrawal times are important because waiting a week to withdraw is simply far too long for people, and even for intent-based bridging (eg. ERC-7683), the cost of capital becomes too high if the liquidity provider has to wait a week. This creates large incentives to instead use solutions with unacceptable trust assumptions (eg. multisigs/MPC) that undermine the whole point of having L2s instead of fully independent L1s. If we can reduce native withdrawal times to under 1h short term, and 12s medium term, then we can further cement the Ethereum L1 as the default place to issue assets, and the economic center of the Ethereum ecosystem. To do this, we need to move away from optimistic proof systems, which inherently require waiting multiple days to withdraw. Historically, ZK proof tech has been immature and expensive, which made optimistic proofs the smart and safe choice. But recently, this is changing rapidly. is an excellent place to track the progress of ZK-EVM proofs, which have been improving rapidly. Formal verification on ZK proofs is also advancing. Earlier this year, I proposed a 2-of-3 ZK + OP + TEE proof system strategy that threads the needle between security, speed and maturity: * 2 of 3 systems (ZK, OP) are trustless, so no single actor (incl TEE manufacturer or side channel attacker) can break the proof system by violating a trust assumption * 2 of 3 systems (ZK, TEE) are instant, so you get fast withdrawals in the normal case * 2 of 3 systems (TEE, OP) have been in production in various contexts for years This is one approach; perhaps people will opt to instead do ZK + ZK + OP tiebreak, or ZK + ZK + security council tiebreak. I have no strong opinions here, I care about the underlying goal, which is to be fast (in the normal case) and secure. With such proof systems, the only remaining bottleneck to fast settlement becomes the gas cost of submitting proofs onchain. This is why short term I say once per hour: if you try to submit a 500k+ gas ZK proof (or a 5m gas STARK) much more often, it adds a high additional cost. In the longer term, we can solve this with aggregation: N proofs from N rollups (plus txs from privacy-protocol users) can be replaced by a single proof that proves the validity of the N proofs. This becomes economical to submit once per slot, enabling the endgame: near-instant native cross-L2 asset movement through the L1. Let's work together to make this happen.
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