Vitalik Buterin asserts that for a global impact, the Ethereum ecosystem necessitates a significant change in mindset.

Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, is urging a shift in mindset towards the development of layer-2 (L2) decentralized applications and solutions following the successful completion of the Dencun hard fork. Speaking at the ETH Global’s Pragma London event, Buterin praised the network upgrade, which allows L2 rollups to achieve scalability by reducing costs associated with submitting cryptographic proofs to Ethereum’s base layer. The event attracted over 500 attendees and Buterin’s presence was a major highlight. With Dencun’s smooth mainnet launch, there was a strong desire to hear about Ethereum’s future from its influential founding member.
Buterin discussed his well-known Ethereum roadmap, which outlined various engineering tasks that have now been realized with the completion of Dencun. The upgrade included Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-4844), which introduced a new method for rollups to add cheaper data to blocks using blob space instead of call data. This change allows off-chain transactions to be processed and summarized before being submitted to the Ethereum blockchain. The blob data is not accessible to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and is automatically deleted after 18 days.
Buterin emphasized the need for change within the Ethereum ecosystem in order to have a significant impact on the internet and traditional financial systems. He described the first decade of Ethereum as inwardly focused, with the ecosystem primarily developing for itself. The Dencun hard fork marked a shift away from a layer 1-centric focus, and Buterin expects Ethereum’s base layer to transition into a phase of maintenance rather than rapid change. However, he acknowledged that L1 changes will still be part of the ecosystem’s development, but a more L2-centric mindset should prevail, with a focus on application developers.
Buterin highlighted the wealth of tools available for building decentralized applications (DApps) on Ethereum, particularly zero-knowledge proofs. He urged developers to adopt an “Ethereum 2.0” approach, utilizing contemporary tools and protocols like L2 rollups to benefit from improved privacy, security, and performance.