Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, said that Base’s design employs centralized components to enhance user experience while remaining anchored to Ethereum’s decentralized security and non-custodial guarantees as measured by L2Beat. This statement was made on the social media platform X.
“Base is doing things the right way: an L2 on top of Ethereum, that uses its centralized features to provide stronger UX features, while still being tied into Ethereum’s decentralized base layer for security,” said Buterin. “Base does not have custody over your funds, they cannot steal funds or stop you from withdrawing funds (this is part of the L2beat stage 1 definition). This is what we mean when we say that L2s are non-custodial, they are extensions of ethereum, not glorified servers that happen to submit hashes.”
Base is an Ethereum Layer-2 network designed to maintain user funds under the control of Ethereum Layer 1 (L1) smart contracts while providing cheaper and faster transactions. According to Buterin, L2 security is measurable, with tools like L2Beat tracking properties such as escape hatches, censorship resistance, and upgrade keys. Users can directly inspect a project’s risk profile and status, including Base’s dedicated page outlining design trade-offs, bridges, and contracts.
Non-custodial Layer-2 solutions anchor user assets on Ethereum L1 and provide enforced exits. If an operator halts operations, users can still withdraw via on-chain proofs or time-locked “escape” paths defined in the rollup’s contracts. L2Beat’s taxonomy summarizes whether users can exit without operator cooperation and what trust assumptions remain. Meanwhile, Ethereum documentation explains challenge periods, validity/fraud proofs, and how data availability enables withdrawals.
Censorship resistance on Layer-2 networks combines protocol rules with user options: if a sequencer refuses transactions, mechanisms like “forced inclusion” or alternative posting routes allow users to submit data directly to L1 or through permissionless channels, ensuring progress. Public incident reports and research threads document these pathways being exercised in practice, illustrating why robust bridging and posting logic are central to rollup security guarantees.
Buterin is a programmer and writer best known as a co-founder of Ethereum. A contributor since Ethereum’s 2015 launch, he has authored widely read posts on scaling, security, and cryptoeconomics. He advocates for a rollup-centric roadmap and techniques like data-availability sampling. His public commentary often explains complex protocol trade-offs for a broad audience and helps set priorities for the ecosystem’s research and development.
Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain for programmable smart contracts secured by proof-of-stake validators. The network’s roadmap focuses on scaling capacity without sacrificing decentralization, progressing from EIP-4844 “blobs” to data-availability sampling and further rollup improvements. Ethereum.org hosts open documentation for developers and users, including security models for Layer-2 solutions and guidance on how L1 contracts ultimately control funds bridged to rollups.
