Vitalik Buterin: If you're afraid to truly decentralize your L2, you might as well just build a centralized server On July 3, 2025, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin @VitalikButerin stated in a speech at EthCC (captured in a video) that many so-called Layer 2 projects built on-chain have backdoors that can be triggered at any time or fail to live up to their claims of decentralization. He believes that, in terms of practical outcomes, this kind of architecture isn't much better than traditional centralized servers. Vitalik Buterin suggested that if developers are hesitant to fully decentralize their projects, the most straightforward approach might just be to create a centralized server instead. Source: Cointelegraph