Ethereum’s native token Ether fell 7% in 24 hours following Vitalik Buterin’s $500,000 ETH sale and his post challenging the long-standing Layer 2 scaling strategy for the blockchain.
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The price of Ethereum’s native token, Ether, is down 7% in a 24-hour time frame, happening after Vitalik Buterin sold $500,000 worth of ETH and made a post questioning the role of Layer 2s (L2s) in scaling Ethereum.

On Feb. 2, Lookonchain posted an analysis claiming Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum creator, sold 211.84 ETH for 500,000 USDC and moved the half million dollars to Kanro. Interestingly, the Kanro Fund has a token, KANRO, that operates as a memecoin with a charitable purpose—where a percentage of every transaction is allocated to fund global health, AI safety, and open-source research through the Kanro charity, founded by Buterin himself.

vitalik.eth(@VitalikButerin) sold 211.84 $ETH for 500,000 $USDC ~20 minutes ago and transferred the 500,000 $USDC to Kanro. pic.twitter.com/sF7TNmIsrK

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 2, 2026

Data gathered from CoinMarketCap shows that 25 hours after this post, ETH is down nearly 10% in the day, trading at $2,117 per token. This is a significant 24-hour drop for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, currently valued at $255 billion.

Nevertheless, the Ethereum

ETH
$2 192



24h volatility:
6.1%


Market cap:
$264.56 B



Vol. 24h:
$41.50 B



trading volume is down 31% from what was seen yesterday, suggesting low-liquidity-driven volatility.

Ethereum (ETH) 24-hour price chart, as of Feb. 3, 2026 | Source: CoinMarketCap

Vitalik Buterin Questions Role of L2s for Scaling Ethereum

In an interesting turn of events, a recent post from Vitalik Buterin added fuel to ETH’s drop, launching doubts on a narrative the Ethereum community had been pushing for years: the need for second layers (L2s) to scale Ethereum and blockchains in general.

Essentially, Buterin argued that the original “rollup-centric” vision for L2s as the primary way to scale Ethereum no longer fully aligns with current realities. “This vision no longer makes sense,” he repeated a few times in the post.

Instead, he proposed treating L2s as a broad spectrum of solutions—ranging from fully Ethereum-secured chains with unique features to looser-connected options—where users can choose based on their own trust and performance requirements.

For L2 teams, Buterin recommended focusing on differentiated value beyond pure scaling, such as privacy-focused VMs, application-specific efficiency, ultra-high throughput, low-latency sequencing, or non-financial use cases like social networks or AI.

There have recently been some discussions on the ongoing role of L2s in the Ethereum ecosystem, especially in the face of two facts:

* L2s’ progress to stage 2 (and, secondarily, on interop) has been far slower and more difficult than originally expected
* L1 itself is scaling,…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 3, 2026

The sudden narrative shift surfaces uncertainties in an industry that has been building and investing in layer-two solutions focused on scaling Ethereum. It adds to the Ethereum co-founder selling significant amounts of the token for charity—although this is typical behavior for him—and overall macro and microeconomic uncertainties, negatively affecting all cryptocurrencies, especially altcoins, as Coinspeaker reported.

Yet at the institutional level, interest in large-cap cryptocurrencies continues to grow, with Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF products seeing inflows.

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