# Vitalik Buterin on rollup-centric Ethereum

**Talk at [ETH Online](https://ethonline.org/) (Oct 3rd, 2020)**

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# Highlights

## 1. Rollups are here ([1:56](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=116))


Mentions:

- zksync: "It actually works surprisingly conveniently".
- loopring: "Got reimbursed for lunch, fees were low as expected.".
- omg: "Plasma is came back from the grave!".
- optimism: "Supporting full EVM contracts".
- starkdex: "Cairo is pretty cool".

## 2. Phase 0 is almost here([5:48](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=348))


## 3. The path to ETH scaling: rollups ([7:45](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=465))


## 4. ETH2 generic computation layer to be ditched in favor of rollups ([22:32](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=1352))


## 5. Challenges ([29:09](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=1749))


# Q & A

## Q: After all previous unsuccessful attempts, how confident are you that rollups are for real? What makes this time different? ([33:02](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=1982))

A: Rollups are a somewhat different class of scaling solutions than channels and plasma. Rollups trade-off some scalability for the ability to run arbitrary state machines. Problems already solved in production that we never even came close to solving in channels and plasma.

## Q: In the light of composability/interoperatbility, do you expect a world of many rollups or will it be the winner-takes-it-all dynamics? ([36:10](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=2170))

A: A good question. I definitely see a couple of rollups end up dominating. I do think that rollups have both network effects and anti-network effects. The main anti-network effects is: the more TPS, the harder it becomes to run a rollup full node. (**Comment by Matter Labs: this affects optimistic rollups a lot stronger than ZK rollups, since the level of security of optimistic rollups directly depends on the number of full nodes**).

In the long term, it's possible that one of them will win. I don't know :)

## Q: Are there fundamental problems that happen if one of them wind? ([37:55](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=2275))

A: The main problem will be if the project that wins ends up being extracting in nasty ways and has a fairy centralized control of a relatively small group of stakeholders trying to max their benefit at the expense of the ecosystem. If that happens, this rollup code can be "nationalized" by the community be engraving it in the L1.

## Q: What would a private rollup look like? ([39:55](https://youtu.be/0QgIfsoVtVo?t=2378))

This is a family of ZK ZK rollup. AZTEC and Matter Labs are working on it. But there are inherent trade-offs between privacy and composability.