Anatoly Yakovenko debunks the notion that ZK proofs make blockchains faster

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko argues that zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs do not automatically speed up blockchains, but instead only reduce replication costs when those costs are the bottleneck. He notes that local transaction processing is often faster than network verification due to superior memory bandwidth, citing a 2023 IEEE study showing it can be 10–100 times faster than network latency.

Yakovenko gives an example: if a transaction’s size is smaller than its state change, downloading and processing it locally is more efficient than relying on ZK proofs. This runs counter to the hype surrounding ZK in high-performance networks like Solana, where replication costs are negligible (only $0.00000512 per vote with 10,000 machines). His view aligns with Solana’s philosophy of prioritizing low-latency, high-throughput consensus, in contrast to Ethereum’s Beam Chain proposal, which leverages ZK to optimize replication-heavy environments.

A zero-knowledge proof (ZK proof) is a cryptographic technique that allows one party to prove they know or have done something correctly without revealing the original data.

In blockchain, ZK proofs are often used to:

Enhance privacy (hide transaction details).

Reduce data transmitted during verification (though, as Yakovenko points out, this does not always make the system faster).

https://x.com/aeyakovenko/status/1954962398709944595