Ethereum scrolls are the ‘gold standard’ but plasma needs to be revisited – Buterin

Plasma, the once-popular Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, should be revisited by teams currently working on Zero Knowledge (ZK) Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM), said Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

In the year Invented in 2017, Plasma moves data and computing — except for deposits, withdrawals, and blockchain — to an off-chain environment.

The two solutions are replaced by Bright and ZK-rollups because they offer cheaper client-side data storage costs and security features “cannot be compared,” Buterin explained in a post on November 14 X (Twitter).

Legal exit games for EVM: return of plasmahttps://t.co/QgyzXAl0wv

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 14, 2023

Coils remain the “gold standard,” Buterin said, but plasma is a “substandard design area” that shouldn't be forgotten.

“Plasma can be a valuable security upgrade for chains,” Buterin added.

“ZK-EVMs finally coming into service this year makes it a great opportunity to re-examine this design space and deliver more efficient builds to simplify the developer experience and protect users' money.”

Like Plasma, validiums move data and computation off-chain but implement ZK-proofs to verify transactions. On the other hand, Plasma uses fraud verification, which is very slow.

Buterin argued for improvements to ZK-proofs, such as accuracy checks, that look past plasma limits, making it more viable as a scale solution.

Adapting Plasma to applications beyond charging proved to be an Achilles' heel for Plasma before ZK-proofs entered the mainstream, admits Buterin.

Buterin expects Ethereum's layer-2 ecosystem to evolve with different technology approaches.

Baby wake up Vitalik now wake up plasma

— sassaal.eth (@sassal0x) November 14, 2023

Related: Is Ethereum Just Giving Up on Plasma?

Less Viable Plasma, Plasma Cash and Plasma Cash Flow are among the iterations derived from Plasma.

Polygon Labs, a company focused on Ethereum layer-2 scaling, implemented Plasma in 2019 but has since incorporated several other solutions.

The move away from Plasma is partly due to the Plasma Group, a non-profit research institute that announced in January 2020 that it would stop working on Ethereum-based scaling.

OMG, the token of the OMG network — which uses Plasma — rose 28.6% to $0.78 in a three-hour window following Buterin's post, according to CoinGecko. However, it fell 14.3 percent to $0.67.

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