Vitalik Signals the End of the Rollup-Centric Roadmap: What's Next?

Hey, Bankless Nation. We haven't done one of these in a while. This is time for a Bankless takes. We're talking about the role of L2s in Ethereum. And you know you're a big deal in crypto if Bankless will spend an entire show on one single tweet.

Okay. This is a Vitalic tweet that we're going to talk about. This was a tweet I think that echoed around the world. It's pretty significant in my mind, in your mind, because it feels like it marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new era. It feels like a book end.

Yeah. A book end to a not a tweet, but like another Vitalic post that we also did a dedicated podcast on in 2020 where he introduced the rollup-centric road map in October of 2020. And now this is an episode about the conclusion of the rollup-centric road map in 2026. And I think that's in particular is important.

We have to choose our words carefully because it's the conclusion not of the rollup road map. The rollup road map continues but it is the conclusion of the rollup-centric the centric word is being ejected. Exactly. And so the rollups for 5 years in Ethereum were the central center point. That was the road. That was the focus. That was how we're going to scale Ethereum. And I think this tweet signifies something new.

So let's get into it. What exactly did Vitalik say on what day was it? February 3rd, 2026.

What did he say? February 3rd. What did he say and what he did not say is pretty important because there were a lot of opinions and takes on Twitter that were just misunderstandings or bad readings of Vitalik's tweet. So, what did Vitalik say?

The punchline that I think Ryan and I agree is like what this tweet the really the big the punch line of this tweet is for both of these facts, we'll talk about what these two facts are. for both of these facts for their own separate reasons means that the original path of layer 2's and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense and we need a new path. We need a new path.

That's the ending of the centric part, right? Yes, that's the ending of the centric path. And so Vitalic is basically saying Ethereum needs a new nonrollup-centric road map.

The two core bits of data as to why Vitalic comes to this conclusion, the two bits that he was referring to is that stage two rollups and rollup interoperability has been far more slow and difficult than previously expected. Stage two roll-ups essentially means that roll-ups get to the point where they are complete decentralized codebased extensions of Ethereum that they are the block space of a layer 2 stage 2 rollup is given the full faith and credit of Ethereum security.

That's right. We cannot get there. We it's been seemingly difficult as an industry to move our rollup ecosystem into stage two. We seemingly are stuck on stage one and for good reason. Yes, that's one part of it. The security part of it.

The second part of it is the interoperability part of it and this is the vision of roll-ups and scaling Ethereum block space I thought was shared liquidity across all of these roll-ups and that's why shared network effects shared state shared shared shared and it's not shared it feels very fragmented that's why he mentions interop as the second so that that's the the the first core bit what's the second?

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The second core bit is that layer 1 scaling is out now actually catching up to a meaningful degree. the **ZKVM**, which I think was an understated part of this tweet, and we'll go into why, but the **ZKVM** and overall layer 1 block space is going to quote projected to increase greatly in 2026.

So, Vitalic just highlights like, actually we can just do the things on the layer 1. Not only can we scale the layer 1 in like the traditional sense with more throughput and faster block times, but we also have this **ZKVM** thing which will massively scale Ethereum far far beyond what any other layer 1 could ever do ever. Let's go there. Let's go down that path.

Yeah, that's the that's the bullish piece. And that was not available importantly six like five six years ago in we thought **ZKVMs** five six years ago were a decade away and turns out they were they're kind of here today. There's I I so those are the two core bits why the rollup-centric road map as it was in 2020 and as Ethereum that the track that Ethereum had been on no longer makes sense.

There's some more happening here though David and this is some association of the question of like what is Ethereum the Ethereum brand the values of the community and both this tweet mentions that and then he tweeted something later a couple days later that we we may want to touch on too but he said L1 does not need L2s to be branded shards because L1 itself is scaling. That's the point we talked about.

And he said we should stop thinking about L2s as literally being branded shards of Ethereum with the social status and responsibilities that this entails. Instead, we can think of L2s as being a full spectrum. This gets into part of the reason I think this is my theory on why Vitalic felt he needed to tweet this at this point in time. Because as we'll discuss later, a lot of the elements of this were already obvious to many and indeed the Ethereum road map had already shifted.

I mean, you could already feel it probably shifted 12 months ago, let's say. This tweet feels a lagged reflection of what the market and the industry has already digested and actually what I think Fatellic thinks at this point. I mean, I think he's thought this for quite a long time. Yeah, part of the reason or the psychology of why to tweet this publicly goes into this is my take anyways. What is Ethereum?

And this idea of like call it I don't want to use words that are too strong but a laundering of the Ethereum brand. Oh, I I think that's extract very very accurate. Okay. in many cases it is or a dilution of what Ethereum means because if all of these L2s are Ethereum but you're not getting Ethereum level guarantees and Ethereum network liquidity how can you actually say they are Ethereum and this gets into kind of the the social piece of this which there had been a meme that many Ethereum people had started with that you and I even started with I believe because this was our our core belief actually L2s are Ethereum.

This is L2 Ethereum. This is kind of like what we thought the road map was. This is what we thought we were building. You and I abandoned this meme probably like 18 to 24 months ago when it became obvious like, oh shoot, when I go into another chain, it's not Ethereum. I'm not getting all of the it's not stage two and I don't get the liquidity. And we started pushing back on that. But that's been hard for the community to forese. Yes. And so there's Yeah.

Go ahead. I think with this tweet we can formally say layer 2 or Ethereum is is dead. It was already dead. Now now like there's no way to for layer 2 to be Ethereum and this is what we are admitting to.

And it's something like to go back into the shoes of October of 2020 when the rollup-centric roadback was introduced. The plan here was that we would make stage two rollups. Stage two being functional equivalent extensions of Ethereum block space without any sort of lack of any sort of property rights or or guarantees of Ethereum. the guarantees of the Ethereum layer 1 because layer 2 is our stage two get extended without lo without loss no lossiness and then with interrop we would have these stage 2 extensions that would be shared st shared state shared liquidity and so therefore with some abstractions we would be able to abstract everything and it would be one unified experience right that was always the plan.

So like stage two roll-ups was like yes optimism arbitum zksync would build their roll-ups But with stage two and interrupt standards, we would collapse everything into one shared experience. This is what we are saying that like this is not happening and we need to account for that. And therefore, when we say layer 2 are Ethereum, that just cannot be accurate because now these branded shards are their own thing. Yes. Yes.

And I think when he says we can consider these layer twos to be full spectrum, you know, full spectrum layer twos, it's kind of unlocking the potential of layer twos to be anything, which was always the promise and always the capac potential of layer 2s. So you can be anything. You can be you can have any sort of relationship with Ethereum that you want and it doesn't have to be any sort of constrained. You must be a layer 2, you must conform to the interop standards, you must be an extension of Ethereum. And we're kind of like opening up the design space and going away from layer twos or Ethereum. That's right.

And I think there was a there's a concession here and we we've read it earlier when Vitalic said L2 progress around full security of Ethereum and Endrop has been slower and more difficult than originally expected. I think that's true. I don't think that there was something there's something insidious about the the road map. we're going to launch all these L2s and we're going to invest in all these L2 tokens and VCs are going to get rich and you know we always knew this wouldn't work out.

I genuinely think the Ethereum community Vitalic as well all the participants of the L2s and all the teams we talked to in those early days they thought they were building a mirror of Ethereum L1 block space indeed that was what they were trying to build. The tech just couldn't get us there. I mean that's my perspective on it. I don't think there's anything insidious here going on. But now that we are in 2026, the meme of L2's R Ethereum does not ring true. Right.

And so we have to recognize that and probably it's never been true. That was the ambition. But we have to recognize that we are never going to accomplish that full ambition. Now I do want to put an asterisk here which is it's also not true that L2s are just side chains. Okay. Correct. Yeah.

And so if if you want to like I mean this is not in mimemetic form but L2s do inherit some of the security guarantees and a little bit of the liquidity I guess preferences of Ethereum. So they do inherit some of it. Yes, you can't put that in meme form. But there are things here that are I guess more nuanced than just saying no there is a symbiotic relationship between the layer 2 and the layer 1. That's right. That's right.

And so we could swing too far on in the other direction. I I guess the second Vitalic tweet also he put a tweet out a couple days later. He said he's been following reactions to what I said on L2s one and a half days ago and he clarified a few more things here. Actually I felt like he was mostly restating what he had already said though in clear terms.

And a part that we missed in his original tweet is he sees a role for L2s to fill a very differentiated a much more differentiated place now in the updated you know L2 road map of 2026 called these Gen 2 L2s which is it's less an EVM clone of Ethereum that you kind of hook an optimistic bridge to and you port all the apps from Ethereum over into these these L2s and it's more differentiated chains, things like app chains like lighter or privacy chains like Aztec, like bringing something net new to these this alliance of chains that Ethereum L1 does not already have, especially when it's in scaling mode.

Differentiation, I think, is is the key word here. back in 2022 to 2023 when the layer 2 era was really in full swing, there was a huge push for Ethereum equivalents, EVM equivalents. I mean I I was I was pushing for that because that's how I saw we get to this, you know, rollup ecosystem that is one big one big shared pool of of state and liquidity. That's that is dead. Ethereum equivalence is dead. It's the same thing as layer layer 2s are not Ethereum. Ethereum is Ethereum. EVM equivalence is now just redundant and now it's go to the opposite end of the spectrum and be very very differentiated.

Have a specialized VM like Aztec or Starknet and do things that the Ethereum layer 1 can never do like scale like Mega ETH be an app chain like lighter just don't do the same thing that Ethereum is doing because Ethereum is going to do that thing. Vitalic sums it up like this in this second follow-up tweet. Basically, number one, do something if you're an L2. Here's my advice for L2s. He says, number one, do something that brings something actually new to the table.

And number two, the vibe should match the substance. The degree of connection to Ethereum, your public image should reflect the degree of connection to Ethereum that your thing has in reality. And that second point gets to kind of the the laundered reputation of Ethereum, right? if you're like a stage zero L2, like do you get to call yourself part of Ethereum and sort of launder the reputation of of Ethereum with that brand when you don't offer the things that Ethereum is actually offering? Right.

Yeah. And we saw that like one of the worst examples of this was the movement layer 2. The move VM as a layer 2 on Ethereum. The whole project ended up just being an unsaavory grift to [laughter] diff to use harsh words. And like this was what was allowed when we don't control what the future of Ethereum scaling look like is like there are barbarians at the gate and if the Ethereum community allows branded shards to come in and raise VC dollars and promote themselves as extensions of Ethereum to the Ethereum community and the Ethereum community praises them because all layer 2 are good. This is an a failure mode and that started to happen and then went too far. Agreed.

All right, let's get to the community reaction and then you and I can give our takes on what this means and and what happened. So, what was the community reaction to this?

Yeah, like five five different categories. There's just like praise for Vitalik's like honesty, adaptability and truth seeeking. There were a lot of I told you soos and criticisms and frustration over delays and wasted effort. John Sharono had this tweet where he tweeted out this meme saying, "Sorry about all the mean [ __ ] I said when I was right." It's [laughter] like I think he gets that tweet. He gets to tweet that tweet. I'm not going to complain.

M Max Resnik who was one of the original like layer 2 road map is broken. He just tweeted out skeptics. Yeah. He tweeted out I'm very much enjoying reading this app today which is just like a coded of just like I'm drinking my tea and enjoying like reading all this. Those are two individuals I would say that you know heart and mind have defected somewhat to the more. They defected because they were like this layer 2 shenanigans is [ __ ] and we should change it. And then when they realized it's not changing, they went to Salana. That's what happened. Yeah.

There was agreement that layer twos aren't Ethereum. Steven Goldfeder had a very good tweet thread where he started off with arbitrum we should say CEO of Arbit number one number one tweet in the thread starts off with arbitum is not Ethereum which is a divergence from previous rhetoric. Sure. And so like previously arbitrum was Ethereum. Now Arbitrum is not Ethereum. And like I I I think this is the correct thing to say.

The cool thing about arbitum is that you know despite arbitrum also being in the EVM equivalence camp. They were like the f one of the first ones them and optimism to be EVM equivalent. Arbitum also established its own unique identity and culture. Yeah. That was distinct from Ethereum and I think that has served them very very well. I agree.

and and so uh so uh Stephen many of the Ethereum community used to go around saying that L2s are Ethereum or Stephen has said in the past arbitum is Ethereum and I just want to point out that while that's not correct that's also not entirely wrong either correct so the the truth of that is arbitum is partially Ethereum or it's like arbitum is an ally of Athereum or like yeah overlap in the ven diagram yeah arbitrum is part the Ethereum Alliance.

So, I don't think it's necessarily dishonest to like say Arbitum is Ethereum because it is. It's just like not the complete story here. You have to put an asterisk and you have to explain what you're actually talking about there. Arbitum flies the flag of Arbitum and it does so inside of the Ethereum Empire. That's kind of right. Okay.

So the way if we want to analogize this to nation states which I love doing as you know David [laughter] okay so I think it's less a state in the union the way Colorado is a state in the union of the United States and it's more like an ally it's more like you know um Sweden being part of NATO which is protected by the United States of America and being this network of allies. It's sort of like the uh the alliance of Ethereum rather than sort of the the nation the coordinated nation state of Ethes of Ethereum. Yeah. Exactly.

You know, so that's one analog. The laws of Ethereum would have been able to have been established if we had come up with very strong interoperability standards and that would have been a much stronger binding alliance between layer 2, but we didn't. That's right. Um Steven's whole post I thought was fantastic and it's it's pretty long and we don't have to read all of it, but there's some more worth pulling out here. What else does he say?

There's a tweet that I I liked that he said, "Vital is correct that the roll-up story has evolved over time. In 2018, roll-ups were primar primarily created for scaling." This is true. We like, "Oh, we're going to scale with rollups." Uh he finishes and says, "Today, they're as much about customization and dominion as they are about scaling."

That is to say, even if a layer 1 could scale infinitely, there are plenty of institutions that nevertheless want their own customized environment. And this is the market sector that arbitum has really penetrated into. Why did they win Robin Hood as a customer of Arbitum Orbit Technology? Because Arbitrum Orbit Technology is part of the Ethereum EVM techstack which is extremely robust, extremely developed, the best developer ecosystem in crypto undoubtedly. It's the Microsoft Excel for for blockchains and Robin Hood gets to customize it as they see fit and they get to control it and they get to own it. it is their ledger and that's the customizability that Vitalik also echoed in his tweet was like this is all all about customized control. This is not about scale. You're not scaling Ethereum. You are able to customize things to fit your specific needs and that's what arbitrum is Stephen is identifying like where arbitrum has bent towards. I think that's right.

And I want to get into a critique that I've heard from some in the Ethereum community other than a critique that maybe you you'll express later, which is like why did it take so long to say this out loud, right? I was eagerly trying to get to that point. Okay. [laughter] But the other the other point is um like Vitalic you could have said it in a different way and this is how Steven expresses this.

So there if there is the perception with the way Vitalic said things maybe the communication that he thinks L2s are a dead end or dead right this is Steven's worry he says I worry that if Ethereum is perceived as being hostile to rollups it will push them away from the ecosystem to be clear it won't push them to launch on Ethereum L2 L1 instead they'll launch their own L1 like ARC and tempo and Ethereum will ultimately lose out this is a delicate communication balancing act right and So, some have criticized Fatalik's tweet for being too aggressive or like trying to push L2s out of the ecosystem or that it's just like that's not how I read it. That's not how I read it.

Some people read it this way that it's just like not a good commercial stance for Ethereum to say these things because at a time when we're trying to attract L2s, we want to give them the good graces of Ethereum. We want to say you're good and you're okay and like welcome to the community rather than kind of like push them away for not being quote unquote pure enough. I don't think that's a valid conclusion of Vitalic. There was a lot of bad readings of Vitalic on [laughter] Twitter and I consider anyone who was like, "Oh, Ethereum is abandoning its L2s." Just did not read the tweet correctly. Okay.

Well, let's get to some more takes here. This is one from PolyChain. What is this? Oh, excuse me. Polygon, Polygon, Polygon. It was It just tweeted out the retweet of Italic and they just said, "Due to market conditions, we now identify as a side chain, which is like a [laughter] facicious admission of kind of like what Poly Polygon is a side chain." And finally, we can talk plainly about that. I think that's one of the benefits of this tweet is like people are finally just like ripping off this aspirational ideal for what the layer 2 road map could be and now just speaking plainly about what it actually is. That's refreshing. It's refreshing to me.

It is funny because uh Polygon is an ally for certain. They did so much for Ethereum in terms of investment, in terms of just like mind share, in terms of onboarding during previous cycles. They they've done so much for Ethereum, but they're not kind of in the alliance of L2s, right? Because they are right side. Yeah. So, they're not a part of NATO, but they're still an Ethereum ally. Again, it's nice to be able to just redefine these terms and and for them to be able to say it.

Um, John Charbano again, you said, "Don't shoot the messenger." Is he just This is a tweet that I've really really enjoyed. Find this. Uh, there are there were people stating this exact problem that Vitalik eventually stated in this tweet in 2026 in 2021 and 2022. So the part of the industry, part of the frustration here is that different people who have identified this problem in Ethereum and then got loud about it started in an order that was like very unpalatable and offensive to the Ethereum community and has slowly worked its way to inside the community of more palatable people and eventually gets all the way to Vitalic.

So starting with Kyle Sanmani who identified this problem and then invested heavily in Salana because of what he identified as a uh a market weakness in the Ethereum strategy. Kyle like enemy of the state number one to the Ethereum community. The next person after that Max Max Resnik very offensive individual kind of just like didn't he he Max doesn't do himself any favors. Also said the same thing goes to Salana. John Charbano like closer to you know the Ethereum community still offensive to many. Uh and then like I'll even throw then after John comes somebody like like us like bank list where in I definitely think that in 2024 we were like hey guys I don't know if this is working out for us actually. Okay, so here's the thing.

I think that Kyle uh obviously team Salana obviously like always paints Ethereum in the worst possible light and that there's no use case and all these things like Max at some level I mean as evidenced by him defecting to Salana too is not sort of not in the camp of rooting for Ethereum and hoping for its best. Um John is someone who is an investor so he's somewhat more pragmatic about it but doesn't actually believe that ETH is a store of value asset and can compete against Bitcoin bankless we however do we are like have been team Ethereum for a very long time we do still believe you know even though the market is telling us otherwise that ETH is a store of value asset and has the biggest opportunity to compete against Bitcoin on that even when we were saying it it kind of Um, dude, we got brand like not everyone obviously, but we got branded we got called enemies of Ethereum. Yes.

During the years of 2024 when we brought Max and John on the podcast and Kyle Smani to talk about this problem and then like Bankless is an enemy of Ethereum because we were saying, "Guys, this road map ain't working for us." Yeah. Let's talk about what parts aren't working. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And and then and then after after us, you know, maybe it' be Anthony Sono. I don't think he really ever did that. But then it goes to Vitalic and now now that Vitalic is saying it like it's finally palatable for the Ethereum community which I find frustrating because there were and I'm sure there were other people listening to bank lists who are like guys why are you so naive about this. Kyle Smani, Max and Resnick and John Sharo have figured this out years ago. Why are you guys taking so long? Yeah, but that's just how things happen.

I mean I think that's how opinions change. That's how it happens, right? Imagine listening to Kyle Smani about everything on his own. You just shut the project down. You'd believe that decentralization doesn't matter. You'd believe there's no such thing as ETH is a monetary asset. You just why not shut it down if you listen [laughter] to everything that guy says. Okay. So, you have to process it and you have to filter it. But it did take a while for that to happen.

There's another take here you've got from Patrick McCory. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed this. I read this this morning. He says that he his interpretation of what Vitalic is saying is that it's not that roll-ups have failed. In fact, it's the opposite. rollups have differentiated themselves relative to Ethereum and have succeeded hugely, but this is just not what was anticipated in the original vision. So, it's a very big point is like roll-ups are doing great. They're just doing their own thing and it's not the Ethereum thing.

They are they are and you even see and um I mean rollups are scaling Ethereum like right now even like even sort of the the closest EVM match to uh L1 they are there Ethereum is what 40 transactions per second now base is you know pushing 800 something like that uh arbitum is like a thousand right and they're scaling too I mean that is helpful and then you're right we already do have these differentiated L2s that have popped up due just due to market forces and then The last take that I like came from my friend uh John Sterlocki. Sterlock. Uh do you you I think you are watching Foundation, Ryan. Yes. The Foundation TV show. Yes. Yeah. Also a book series uh mainly known as as a book series but now now a TV show. Isaac Azimov. Isaac Azimov. Yeah.

So like this requires to understand this a little bit but I'll do my best to explain. He goes the Harry Seldon approach to leadership doesn't work. Okay. What's what's the Harry Seldon approach to leadership in in this movie series, TV series? It spans over a deep cut. It's a very deep cut. It spans over like a thousand years. And so people go into like cyber sleep and they extend their lifespan in order to do this intergalactic huge coordination problem across vast amounts of time. And Harry Selden is this guy who comes up with this plan for the next thousand years of how we come to like coordinate across this very future problem that we need to like prepare for that's a thousand years multiple generations in the future.

So the idea here is centralized predictive long-term master planning by a single genius or small elite fails in practice because the real world is based on messy human systems. You can't set a grand planned in motion and expect it to unfold perfectly via predetermined interventions. Real leadership needs to be adapted, responsive, and decentralized and account for chaos. individual initiative. Black swans are unpredictable actors, not rigid top- down orchestration, assuming people will behave by predict like predictable particles. Over reliance on inevitable trajectories or this plan will save us leads to brittleleness, detachment from reality or failure when anomalies appear.

I think this is such an astute comparison as to how and how the layer 2 road map got implemented and why it failed. I actually think that that's exactly what's happening though, right? it this is this is um this is like top down and bottom up discovering that this didn't work from a market perspective and adjusting. So this is just like not making the Harry Seldom mistake. The Harry Seldom mistake would be in 2026 we are not we are learning to not make the Harry Seldom mistake. But I think for the last 5 years of time it has been that a little bit but as evidenced by this pivot it's all fine. This is how it works out. We went and we tried something late. It's late. It's later than it needed to be, but it's not too late. We'll get to some takes on this.

Let let me ask you some questions. Just a prompt, three options for you. Um, was the rollup-centric road map wrong? The whole idea of remember modular versus monolithic, right? Ethereum is going the modular path and you know, other chains going the monolithic plan. Let me give you three options. One, it was dead wrong. Two, it was partially wrong. Three, it was still the right play at the time. What do you think?

somewhere between partially wrong and still the right play at the right time. Leaning towards more uh partially wrong. Uh the more correct thing would have been to identify the rollup road map, not ever say the word centric and run with we we the Ethereum ecosystem has a monopoly on smart contract chains and we need to make sure we never give that up. And now that everyone is on the Ethereum layer 1, we need to aggressively scale the layer 1 as fast as reasonably possible without sac without sacrificing Ethereum's values. And in parallel, because we love doing things in parallel, we will also develop the roll up road map in parallel and it will not have the word centric in it. We will keep and point the word centric at the Ethereum layer one. That would have been the [clears throat] best. We got to figure it out. We got to figure it out.

But here here's why I'm probably more a three. it was still the right play at the time. But also part two because we could have adjusted sooner is because hindsight is 2020, man. We had no idea how this was going to work out. Like it's really rich of us like six years later to be like, "Hey 2020 idiots, you should have seen this [laughter] coming." But the thing is like some people did some people did see it earlier but not in 2020. Um let let me go through another thought exercise with you which is um I put this together. what we thought versus what we got and see how much you agree what we thought this is back in 2020 the thought right uh is that L2s would fully scale Ethereum block space and scaling would be solved what we got instead was fragmented liquidity not Ethereum level security on our L2s and this idea of like side chain plus which is kind of what L2s ended up being here's another one thought what we thought L2s would unleash new use cases and apps but what we got is mostly a lot of DeFi on L2s that was similar to the L1. Yep.

What we thought was stage two would be a breeze. We'll get there. It's no problem. What we got is is it really really freaking hard and do chains and users even want it? I'm not sure that I want a chain that we do not that can't be corrected or updated if there's a bug. Uh what we thought L2s would bring value cruel to ETH the asset either as money ETH is money people using it in the ecosystem or fees. What we got instead was low fees generated by L2s and also other assets started invading some of these L2s, right? Tokenized Bitcoin is a thing. Stable coins are a big thing. So, we didn't even get the money monetary value acing on the ETH Bitcoin ratio. We were beaten at some level. Ethereum was beaten this cycle by app chains. uh in particular a pure store of value app chain which is called Bitcoin. Bitcoin. What do you think of those? You agree with that? Those are all right. I agree with all of us.

All right, let's give our takes and a retrospective. Um you want to go first? Okay, you want to Okay, indulge me. No, I'm I'm happy to go first. [laughter] I I've got some stuff I would like. I got to jump soon. So, we got to constrain our time. We probably have like 15 minutes. I'm going to zoom out and give you my take on the retrospective. So there were definitely some wins over the last uh 5 years in L2s and I don't want to downplay that massive wins. We had this successful alliance of chains. We delivered **ZK** EVM tech discovered **ZK** fleshed that tech tree out. It's freaking awesome. That's coming back to the L1. Without the L2 roadmap we wouldn't have had that. We had massive user onboarding on base and arbitrum. It's all EVM network effect. It's all good. And plus, I would say this might have been the only option at the time in 2022 if you're going to scale Ethereum and also keep the decentralized promise. And the decentralized promise is Bitcoin level decentralization or better. That was the only option in in 2020. Okay. So, we preserved that through all of this. That's in the win