Vitalik Buterin openly states that Ethereum can't compete in "speed": Why scalability is the true moat of ETH?
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently articulated a core perspective in a new blog post: Ethereum cannot, and should not, rely solely on “faster speeds” to succeed. In his view, the laws of physics and the fundamental requirements of decentralization impose an inherent latency limit on public chain consensus mechanisms. The sustainable path for Ethereum’s scalability is bandwidth expansion, not infinite compression of block times.
Buterin defines the Ethereum mainnet as a “world heartbeat,” rather than a high-frequency trading engine. He points out that through technologies like PeerDAS, zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), and zkEVM, Ethereum has already found a way to achieve order-of-magnitude scalability while maintaining decentralization. Since the Fusaka upgrade in December 2025, the number of new on-chain addresses has increased by over 110%, demonstrating tangible results of the scalability approach.
In contrast, reducing latency faces more stringent constraints. The speed of light itself, global node distribution, the practical conditions of home hardware running validation nodes, and the censorship resistance and anonymity requirements of validators all limit further compression of block times. Buterin believes that even with optimized peer-to-peer networks and fewer validators per slot, block times can only be reduced to 2–4 seconds at most. Going below that would encounter physical and economic bottlenecks that cannot be solved through engineering means.
On the AI application layer, Buterin also offers a clear judgment. He notes that high-speed AI systems require city-level or even building-level local infrastructure and cannot rely on the globally synchronized main chain for real-time interactions. This is precisely the purpose of Layer 2 networks: the Ethereum mainnet handles global trusted settlement, while the Rollup ecosystem supports high-speed, localized, application-intensive scenarios.
In another article, Buterin compares Ethereum to foundational infrastructure technologies like Linux or BitTorrent: not aiming for an extreme user experience, but becoming a bottom-layer system that is “silently relied upon” by users and institutions worldwide. This positioning is gaining institutional recognition, with financial institutions like JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank developing tokenized products based on Ethereum.
Overall, Vitalik Buterin’s latest statements clarify the boundaries of the “Ethereum speed race”: Ethereum’s core strength does not lie in millisecond-level latency, but in achieving global-scale trusted collaboration under decentralization—precisely where Ethereum’s long-term value resides.
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