Can Ethereum become the "heartbeat of the world"? Vitalik discusses the balance between scalability and decentralization

【Blockchain Rhythm】How should Ethereum improve its scalability? Vitalik has recently had new thoughts on this question.

His core point is quite interesting—rather than solely pursuing lower latency, it’s more reliable to focus on increasing bandwidth. Why? Because latency is constrained by hard limits such as the speed of light, node distribution, censorship resistance, and economic costs, making it difficult to improve infinitely. On the other hand, there is greater room for bandwidth enhancement. Technologies like PeerDAS and ZKPs can theoretically achieve thousands of times of scalability while maintaining decentralization.

This is based on a deep philosophy—Ethereum should be as reliable and stable as the “world heartbeat,” rather than being used as a high-performance game server. If an application truly requires such high speed, then it should consider off-chain solutions, such as layer 2 networks. This also explains why, even if Ethereum itself achieves significant scalability, layer 2 ecosystems will continue to exist and develop. The two are actually complementary in their roles.