Ethereum, a smart contracting platform powering decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) operations, and more, has a problem that cannot be solely solved by layer-2 scaling platforms, its co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently stated. Buterin said though the network is widely used and there are users, it is a challenge to verify mainnet transactions. Challenges arising from this mean not many people can run their nodes and instead rely on trusted third parties, including light clients. Although lightweight clients are essential, the co-founder notes that verifying whether a particular Ethereum validator follows established protocol rules is challenging. In the first option, he suggests constraining the mainnet and forcing activity to layer-2. This would require reducing the mainnet gas-per-block target from 15 million to 1 million, with the only function of layer-1 being to verify layer-2 protocols. While this solution could work, there can be flaws.
Vitalik Buterin zkEVM can solve verification problems in Ethereum
