Vitalik Buterin Outlines Plan to Scale Ethereum Base Layer by 10X

According to latest reports, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has said at ETHGlobal Prague 2025 that “Ethereum should scale 10X” in the next year to relieve congestion and make dApps more accessible. This is one of the clearest roadmaps for Ethereum’s L1 yet, as the debate over scalability and efficiency has been going on for a long time.

Speaking to developers and researchers at the Ethereum-focused conference in Prague last week, Buterin outlined his vision for a safe and gradual expansion of Ethereum’s L1.

“I do think there’s a lot of room to scale safely,” he said. “My view is that we should scale L1 by about 10x in the next year and a bit.”

Why Ethereum’s Base Layer Still Needs Work

Vitalik Buterin acknowledged the progress of L2 rollups but emphasized the need for Ethereum’s core layer to scale directly. “A year would be great,” he added, referring to the timeline for 10X improvement in Ethereum’s base capacity.

“There are people that are more brave than I am and don’t believe in a take-a-breather step and think we should commit today to 1,000x, but I don’t believe in that.”

He said an aggressive scaling attempt could backfire and introduce security risks and centralize Ethereum’s otherwise decentralized architecture.

The Trade-Off: L2 Growth vs L1 Scaling

L2 networks have been effective in addressing some of Ethereum’s speed and cost issues. These rollups process transactions off-chain and then settle them in batches on Ethereum, relieving the mainnet. Arbitrum, Optimism and zkSync have handled billions of dollars in transaction volume in the last year.

However, this is a growing concern in the community. They say L2s are fragmenting the ecosystem and suppressing the native ETH token over time. Since L2 tokens compete for attention and liquidity, some argue they dilute Ethereum’s economic moat.

In fact, Buterin’s proposal to scale Ethereum 10X at L1 is to reverse this trend and make mainnet the performance standard.

ETH Price and Ecosystem Impacts

At the time of Vitalik Buterin’s comments, ETH was above $2,500 up 40% in the last month according to CoinGecko. Still 48% below the 2021 all time high of $4,878, the recent price rise has restored confidence in Ethereum’s future especially as attention shifts from speculation to infrastructure growth.

The overall crypto market has also seen a renewed focus on fundamentals. Bitcoin is hovering around $105,000, and institutional capital is flowing into tokenized assets. 

If Ethereum can deliver 10X scaling in a year, it could drastically reduce transaction costs and onboarding friction, two of the biggest obstacles to mass adoption.

Layer-1 vs Solana: Competing Visions

Solana is often seen as a direct competitor to Ethereum especially in terms of speed and throughput. Ethereum settles around 30 TPS on the base layer (before rollups) while Solana can do over 2,000 TPS with its monolithic architecture.

Buterin’s 10X plan wouldn’t put Ethereum on par with Solana in raw throughput but it would eliminate most of the user experience gap. More importantly, Ethereum’s modular decentralized design still appeals to developers building long term, resilient applications.

Risk and Realism: Why Buterin Prefers Gradual Scaling

Despite the need to scale, Vitalik Buterin has repeatedly warned against aggressive timelines. His ETHGlobal Prague speech reiterated the need for incremental, testable upgrades. A 1,000x leap, while technically appealing, could introduce bugs, validator centralization or unknown attack surfaces.

Even in his ETHGlobal remarks, Buterin framed the 10X goal as a community-wide responsibility.

“I’m optimistic,” he said, “but we need to get this right.”

There is no specific date for the 10X upgrade, but several milestones in the Ethereum roadmap suggest incremental progress throughout 2025.

Conclusion: Ethereum’s 10X Path Is Ambitious But Grounded

Vitalik Buterin’s call to scale Ethereum 10X in the next year is worth looking forward to in it’s long term journey. Targeting the base layer rather than relying on Layer-2 solutions, the core team is going for performance without sacrificing decentralization or security.

While there are challenges, from technical implementation to coordination between teams, Buterin’s proposal is clear and measured.

FAQs

What does it mean to scale Ethereum 10X?

Vitalik Buterin wants Ethereum’s Layer-1 network to handle 10x more activity in the next year, faster and cheaper.

Why Layer-1 scaling instead of Layer-2s?

Layer-2s help, but Vitalik Buterin says the base layer is key for long term efficiency, decentralization and ETH’s price support.

When is 10X scaling expected?

Buterin mentioned a one year timeline, so some upgrades may roll out by 2026, full implementation may take longer.

How will 10X scaling affect Ethereum’s price?

Better performance will reduce gas fees and attract more users, increasing ETH demand and possibly the price.

Glossary

Layer-1 (L1): The base blockchain network, in this case Ethereum, that processes all transactions and data storage.

Layer-2 (L2): A secondary framework or protocol built on top of Ethereum that helps with scalability.

Proto-Danksharding: An upcoming Ethereum upgrade (EIP-4844) that introduces data blobs for data availability for rollups.

Rollups: Layer-2 solutions that bundle many transactions off-chain and submit them to the mainnet in batches.

Throughput: The number of transactions a blockchain can process per second.

Source

Decrypt

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