Vitalik Buterin believes that L2 fast withdrawals are more important than decentralization. This pragmatic shift aims to improve user experience and cross-chain costs, paving the way for Ethereum's Rollup-Centric ultimate strategy. (Background: V God calls for Ethereum to abandon Optimistic 'ZK as the orthodoxy', is it vision or a dictatorship that stifles the ecosystem?) (Supplementary background: Did V God set the gas limit for transactions? A detailed explanation of Ethereum's new proposal EIP-7983) After careful consideration of Vitalik Buterin's recent statements regarding L2 fast withdrawals, it’s quite interesting. Simply put: he believes that achieving fast withdrawals within 1 hour is more important than reaching Stage 2. The logic behind this priority adjustment is worth deep thinking: 1) The one-week withdrawal waiting period has indeed become a major issue in practical applications, not only because of poor user experience, but more crucially because it has increased cross-chain costs. For example, intent-based bridging solutions like ERC-7683 require liquidity providers to bear a week's worth of capital occupation costs, which directly raises cross-chain fees. As a result, users are forced to choose to trust multi-signature schemes with presumably weaker assumptions, which precisely contradicts the original intention of L2. Therefore, Vitalik proposed a 2-of-3 mixed proof system (ZK + OP + TEE), where ZK and TEE can provide immediacy, and TEE and OP both have sufficient production verification. Theoretically, any two systems can guarantee security, thereby avoiding the time cost of merely waiting for ZK technology to fully mature. 2) Furthermore, Vitalik's new statements make it feel like he has become more pragmatic? From a previous idealistic youth full of 'decentralization crusades' and 'anti-censorship', he has now directly given hard indicators as a pragmatist: 1-hour withdrawals, 12-second finality, everything has become simple and crude. Previously, everyone was competing over the degree of decentralization in Stage 2, but now V God directly states that fast withdrawals are more important, which essentially re-prioritizes the entire L2 track. 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 fast withdrawals and cross-chain aggregation are achieved, other public chains will find it much more difficult to challenge the Ethereum ecosystem. Little V's reasoning is also because the market has already voted with its feet, telling him that the market does not care about the technical slogans of decentralization, but pays more attention to experience and efficiency. This shift from 'ideal-driven' to 'result-oriented' reflects that the entire Ethereum ecosystem is evolving toward a more commercial and competitive direction. 3) The question arises: to achieve the long-term goals of practical experience and infrastructure construction, the next Ethereum ecosystem will likely revolve around the maturity and cost control of ZK technology. From the current situation, although ZK technology is rapidly advancing, costs still remain a realistic constraint. A 500k+ gas ZK proof means that in the short term, only hourly submission frequencies can be achieved. To realize the ultimate goal of 12 seconds, breakthroughs in aggregation technology are still needed. The logic here is clear: the cost of frequent proof submissions for a single Rollup is too high, but if the proofs of N Rollups can be aggregated into one, spreading the cost over each slot (12s) becomes economically feasible. This also presents a new technical route for the L2 competitive landscape; those L2 projects that can first achieve breakthroughs in ZK proof optimization may find a foothold, while those still struggling with Optimism's optimistic proofs are likely to lose direction.

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