Arbitrum co-founder changes stance? Posts claiming "Arbitrum is not Ethereum" in response to Vitalik's roadmap controversy

On February 4th, Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of Off Chain Labs, the development team behind Arbitrum, posted on social media stating: Arbitrum is not Ethereum. Arbitrum and Ethereum are close allies and have maintained a symbiotic relationship over the past five years. But it is not Ethereum. The view that there is a contradiction between expanded L1 and a thriving L2 ecosystem is incorrect. I have never heard of an L2 team opposing L1 expansion. In fact, Offchain Labs not only supports L1 scaling but also directly contributes to it—acquiring and continuously funding Prysm to ensure it has sufficient funds and resources to continue Ethereum development. Vitalik’s statement that “the story of Rollup is evolving over time” is correct. But the best path for Ethereum to attract large institutions remains L2. In fact, Ethereum’s L2 is a superpower that enables it to win over institutions that other L1s simply cannot provide solutions for. During the market volatility last Saturday, the peak processing capacity of Arbitrum and Base exceeded 1000 TPS, while Ethereum’s was 40 TPS. Ethereum L1 cannot directly handle such transaction volumes, and this is precisely the purpose of L2—L1 will not scale to the point where L2 is no longer needed. Notably, Steven previously posted on January 3, 2025, that “Arbitrum is actually Ethereum,” and that tweet has not been deleted. BlockBeats previously reported that Ethereum founder Vitalik tweeted yesterday that, as L1 scaling and L2 development progress slowly, the original vision of Layer 2 and its role within Ethereum are no longer reasonable, requiring new development paths and positioning.