Vitalik Buterin Pushes Ethereum Builders to Move Beyond Clone Chains
Vitalik Buterin has warned Ethereum builders in opposition to constructing “copy-paste” EVM chains and superficial layer-2 connections, arguing that the ecosystem dangers stagnation if it continues prioritising comfort over real innovation.
In a post on X, Buterin mentioned latest reactions to his feedback on layer-2 scaling highlighted a deeper structural concern: too many tasks are defaulting to acquainted technical patterns reasonably than exploring new design area.
Copy-Paste EVM Chains Are a Dead End
Buterin criticised the widespread method of launching new EVM-compatible chains and connecting them to Ethereum by way of optimistic bridges with week-long withdrawal delays.
He likens the follow to forking early DeFi protocols like Compound for governance — a technique that when felt productive however finally restricted creativity.
“If you make an EVM chain with out an optimistic bridge to Ethereum, that’s even worse,” Buterin wrote, including that the ecosystem doesn’t want extra “copypasta” EVM chains or extra layer-1 networks.
Ethereum’s base layer, he argued, is already scaling and can ship considerably extra EVM blockspace over time. While that blockspace won’t be infinite — significantly as AI-driven functions demand decrease latency and better throughput — Buterin mentioned Ethereum can nonetheless accommodate a variety of use circumstances with out fragmenting into numerous L1s.
Build Something Genuinely New
Instead of cloning current architectures, Buterin urged builders to give attention to programs that introduce basically new capabilities. He pointed to privacy-preserving designs, app-specific execution environments, and ultra-low-latency programs as examples of innovation that meaningfully increase what blockchains can do.
His feedback mirror a broader concern that infrastructure improvement has turn out to be incremental reasonably than imaginative, with groups optimising for familiarity and quick deployment as an alternative of long-term breakthroughs.
Deep Ethereum Integration, Not Cosmetic Bridges
A second main theme of Buterin’s publish was the hole between how tasks market their connection to Ethereum and the way tightly they’re really built-in at a technical degree.
He mentioned he’s supportive of “app chain” architectures when the connection to Ethereum is first-class reasonably than an afterthought.
As an instance, Buterin described a possible structure for prediction markets through which issuance, decision and consumer accounts reside on Ethereum L1, whereas high-frequency buying and selling happens on a rollup or L2 that immediately reads L1 state.
By distinction, he criticised tasks that function largely as unbiased chains however add minimal Ethereum integration for optics — corresponding to deploying a fundamental bridge purely to meet ecosystem expectations.
Institutional Chains and Transparency
Buterin additionally outlined a special class of app chains geared toward establishments corresponding to authorities registries or social platforms. These programs might publish cryptographic proofs, together with STARK-verified Merkle roots, to a blockchain to present algorithmic transparency, even when they aren’t trustless or credibly impartial within the Ethereum sense.
While such chains “should not Ethereum,” Buterin mentioned they nonetheless advance an identical imaginative and prescient by enabling verifiable programs and will stay synergistic with Ethereum.
Matching Vibes With Substance
Buterin distilled his message into two rules: construct one thing that actually provides new worth, and be certain that a venture’s public positioning precisely displays its actual technical relationship with Ethereum.
For builders, he mentioned, credibility comes not from branding as “Ethereum-aligned,” however from architectures that genuinely earn that label.
The publish Vitalik Buterin Pushes Ethereum Builders to Move Beyond Clone Chains appeared first on Cryptonews.
