To address user experience, Vitalik Buterin is determined to promote ZK technology to replace OP. This is not just a technical upgrade; it is a political gamble for Ethereum to move from 'warring states' to 'federal unity'. This article deeply analyzes its grand layout and potential centralization risks. (Background: The Ethereum Foundation releases a 10-year blueprint for the future: unlocking 1 million TPS for ETH, creating a quantum security defense line, and three upgrades to streamline the protocol.) (Context: Is the NFT market's 'happy moment' a false revival? Only blue-chip projects consolidate Ethereum's position.) In the world of Ethereum, no statement can stir the nerves of the billion-dollar market more than a post from founder Vitalik Buterin. Recently, a post from V God caused a shockwave: he believes that the future of Layer 2 scaling solutions should decisively abandon Optimistic Rollups (OP) and shift to Zero-Knowledge Rollups (ZK), aiming to reduce the time for users to withdraw assets from L2 to L1 from the currently frustrating 7 days to under 1 hour. On the surface, this is a technical dispute over 'OP vs. ZK', but at its core, it is a 'political mandate' initiated by Ethereum's core that profoundly impacts its future political and economic landscape: V God is attempting to redraw the entire game board, integrating the L2 'warlords' with their own armies into a 'federal system' centered around L1 as the absolute core. I personally fully agree with V God’s judgment about the future; a fast, seamless, and secure Ethereum is the ultimate goal for everyone. However, I have some doubts about his 'methods' for driving change. This kind of mandate-like guidance, even if full of foresight, may be a heavy blow to many teams currently building around Arbitrum, Optimism, etc. I anticipate that after this statement, not only will existing Optimistic Rollups users be impacted, but it will also force all developers, investors, and VCs to 'see the situation clearly', effectively asking them to gradually abandon the existing routes of Arbitrum and Optimism. Is this call for reform a great leap forward or a disaster that stifles innovation? What exactly is Ethereum’s path, and why can’t it be decided by the market and pure community voting? When the survival of a public chain cannot be decided by users but by its founder, perhaps this becomes the greatest hidden concern for Ethereum's future. V God pursues speed? Looking to redefine security for user experience. It is actually easy to understand why V God is so eager for 'innovation'; many people focus on the 'speed' of ZK technology, but the real underlying motivation is a more fundamental term: 'security'. This may sound somewhat contradictory; after all, the security model of OP is theoretically valid as it ensures that no fraudulent behavior occurs through a lengthy 7-day 'challenge period'. However, theory is pale, and reality is stark. In the financial world, time is money, and it is extremely expensive money. Moreover, when Wall Street institutions communicate with oracle agreements, they never understand why they need to wait seven days. For ordinary users, waiting a week to access their own funds is not only a terrible experience but also an unbearable constraint. For liquidity providers who need high-frequency turnover, the capital cost of these 7 days is astronomical. It’s like we’ve built a bank that is theoretically impregnable, but regulations require that every withdrawal must wait a week. As a result, customers, in urgent need, all rush to the neighboring bank, which is mixed with all sorts of risks and unregulated underground money houses; does the 'security' of this bank still have meaning? The answer may vary from person to person, but V God is clearly dissatisfied with the current situation. Thus, this call is not merely a technical upgrade but a profound 'security model correction'. He has expanded the definition of security from 'theoretically decentralized protocols' to 'risk minimization based on real user behavior'. His proposed 2-of-3 hybrid solution (ZK + OP + TEE) precisely demonstrates that this is not just a decision from pure technological purists but a comprehensive security upgrade consideration, positively compromising with harsh realities. However, on the other hand, whether something is secure cannot just be perceived by developers alone. In fact, in the face of such delays in Optimistic Rollups, the market has also come up with its own 'solutions'. Many users are flocking to various third-party 'cross-chain bridges' that provide users with instant liquidity at the cost of sacrificing security in a centralized manner. This creates a highly ironic yet reasonable and universal situation: users, in order to escape the withdrawal delays of L2, are instead turning to solutions filled with centralization risks and frequent hacking attacks. The transaction bridge agreements of Arbitrum and Optimism are willing to prioritize certain users, allowing them to withdraw small assets that have already gone through a seven-day verification period first, but larger users may not be able to do so, as Optimistic Rollups inherently limit liquidity. In principle, this undermines the core value of L2's original promise of 'inheriting L1's security'. But to be honest, this logic has been very successful in Arbitrum and Optimism, even leading to successful cases like Base. So is the security that V God pursues the same as the security that the market needs? This may be worth pondering over time. From the Warring States to federal unity: The endgame of the power game of L2. If correcting the security model is V God’s 'art', then his true 'way' is to end the 'Warring States period' of L2 and open a unified 'federal system'. In recent years, L2s led by Arbitrum and Optimism have flourished, each governing independently, forming separate ecosystems, liquidity islands, and user groups. During the development stage of Layer 2, such 'barbaric growth' may have been necessary; it spurred innovation and accommodated many different tracks. However, now, the 'Balkanization' problem of L2 has become increasingly serious, with liquidity severely fragmented, and the user experience of traversing between different L2s is extremely broken. More importantly, many other chains and DA layers are detaching from Ethereum's center, which is eroding Ethereum's network effect, namely Ethereum's authority as the absolute core. The endgame blueprint that V God describes in the article, that sentence 'achieving nearly instant native cross-L2 asset transfer through L1', is key to understanding this grand chess game. The implication of this statement is: Future communication between L2s should no longer rely on chaotic third-party bridges but must be unified and natively settled through the 'mother ship' L1. This is a redistribution of Ethereum's political landscape. V God’s goal is not to support a particular ZK team to defeat the OP team but to redefine the roles of all L2s—from 'independent kingdoms' to 'federal members'. In this future, L1 will serve as the supreme 'global settlement layer', responsible for unified asset issuance and final security confirmation. All L2s, whether ZK or OP, will be small city-states focused on 'execution'. You can have different local characteristics (for example, optimizing for gaming or social interaction), but your 'currency' and 'law' (assets and security) must be determined by the federal center.

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