Ethereum dropped its plan of developing a layer 2 rollup namechain and will instead move forward with the ENSv2 upgrade, where it will build on the Ethereum mainnet. “It’s a good decision!” wrote co-founder Vitalik Buterin to ETH lead developer, Nick.eth’.
The Ethereum network formulated a plan of building a layer 2 rollup, which is a namechain, in November 2024. When the plan to develop a layer 2 rollup was being proposed, the Ethereum L1 was expensive for most users, as the gas prices kept spiking regularly, making even basic ENS transactions cost tens of dollars. “Huge L1 scalability was not part of the Ethereum roadmap, and the message was clear that L2s were the way forward.”
Layer 2 improvement slows down
However, the surroundings have changed now. According to Buterin, the Layer 2’s progress to stage 2 and interoperability has been far more lethargic and more difficult than originally expected.
And on top of that, Layer-1 itself has been scaling, and the fees are very low, and limits are projected to increase greatly in 2026. In particular, the recent Fusaka upgrade was a big boost that raised the gas limit to 60 million, which is a 2x increase from the beginning of 2025. With the Ethereum core developers now targeting 200 million gas limit targets in 2026, a 3x increase from today, and that’s before any ZK upgrades land, the decision to abandon the plan was inevitable.
ENS registration gas fee drops by 99% while gas limit doubles
Nick.ETH wrote in a blog, “We’ve seen a 99% reduction in ENS registration gas costs over the past year, coinciding with Ethereum’s gas limit increases from 30M to 60M in 2025. ENS name registration now costs less than 5 cents on average in gas, down from close to $5 in gas a year ago.”
Although Buterin approved of the decision to abandon the plan, the Ethereum community was not happy.
While some of the community members were not happy about this sudden change, others reflected on Buterin’s recent sell-off, where the cofounder got rid of ETH when it dumped below $2k. Replying to Buterin’s post, a crypto netizen wrote on X, “is this why you’re dumping on us ser? ”
