There’s
the
bully
pulpit.
And
then
the
silent
treatment.
Ethereum
co-founder
Vitalik
Buterin
wrote
on
X
that
he
will
be
weighing
in
on
layer
2
networks
differently
in
his
public
posts
from
now
on
–
omitting
mentions
of
those
projects
that
aren’t
decentralized
enough.
To
merit
any
ink,
they
have
to
at
least
meet
a
decentralization
threshold
known
as
“Stage
1,”
under
a
hierarchy
he
laid
out
years
ago
in
a
blog
post.
“Starting
next
year,
I
plan
to
only
publicly
mention
(in
blogs,
talks,
etc)
L2s
that
are
stage
1+,”
Buterin
wrote.
“It
doesn’t
matter
if
I
invested,
or
if
you’re
my
friend;
stage
1
or
bust.”
In
2022,
Buterin
proposed
a
set
of
stages
for
rollups,
to
classify
them
in
their
pursuit
of
decentralization.
The
criteria
is
meant
to
showcase
that
rollups
tend
to
rely
on
“training
wheels”
and
deploy
their
protocols
to
users
before
it’s
ready
to
fully
decentralize.
“While
a
project’s
tech
is
still
immature,
the
project
launches
early
anyway
to
allow
the
ecosystem
to
start
forming,
but
instead
of
relying
fully
on
its
fraud
proofs
or
ZK
proofs,
there
is
some
kind
of
multisig
that
has
the
ability
to
force
a
particular
outcome
in
case
there
are
bugs
in
the
code,”
Buterin
wrote
in
a
blog
post
in
2022.
In
blockchain
terms,
multisig
is
short
for
a
key
that
can
be
controlled
by
combining
multiple
signatures
–
often
representing
a
small
group
of
people
who
could
make
changes
under
emergency
conditions,
essentially
bypassing
the
typical
consensus
process
used
to
validate
the
network.
Taking
off
the
‘training
wheels’
Buterin
has
categorized
the
projects
in
three
different
stages,
ranging
from
0
to
2.
Stage
0
is
when
a
layer
2
network
relies
on
full
training
wheels.
Stage
1
is
when
it
has
limited
training
wheels,
but
is
running
with
fraud
proofs
–
an
important
cryptographic
process
that
avoids
the
need
for
a
single
centralized
entity
to
settle
any
layer-2
transactions
to
the
base
Ethereum
blockchain.
Stage
2
means
a
project
is
fully
decentralized.