Vitalik: High transaction fees once stifled the first wave of encrypted payment adoption Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin @ Vitalik Buterin reviewed his trip to Argentina in 2021 on September 18, 2024, stating that the public generally uses free instant internal transfers through Binance. He believes that high transaction fees once stifled the early exploration of decentralized payments. But in 2024, Ethereum L2 transaction fees will drop below 1 cent, and Optimism and Arbitrarum will reach the first phase of security milestones, making the expansion plan finally affordable. In February 2026, he stated that the original expansion strategy with rollup as the absolute core was being revised, and L1 itself was accelerating its expansion. In the future, L1 and L2 will develop in synergy, while L2 needs to provide differentiated value (such as privacy and application specific).