Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin Suggests Revisiting Plasma for Scaling Solutions

According to Cointelegraph, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested that teams working on zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVMs) should revisit Plasma, a once-prominent Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution. Invented in 2017, Plasma diverts data and computation to an off-chain environment, except for deposits, withdrawals, and Merkle roots. It was eventually superseded by optimistic and zero-knowledge (ZK)-rollups, which offered cheaper client-side data storage costs and unmatched security properties. Buterin stated that while rollups remain the 'gold standard,' Plasma is an 'underrated design space' that should not be forgotten. He believes that Plasma could be a significant security upgrade for chains that would otherwise be validiums. With ZK-EVMs coming to fruition this year, Buterin sees it as an excellent opportunity to re-explore the design space and develop more effective constructions to simplify the developer experience and protect users' funds. Validiums, like Plasma, move data and computation off-chain but implement ZK-proofs to validate transactions. Plasma, however, uses fraud proofs, which are much slower. Buterin argued that improvements in ZK-proofs, such as validity proofs, address the past limitations of Plasma, making it more viable as a scaling solution. He also acknowledged that adapting Plasma for applications beyond payments has been a challenge before ZK-proofs entered the mainstream. Buterin expects the Ethereum layer 2 ecosystem to evolve with diverse technological approaches.