PANews reported on July 11 that the Ethereum Foundation announced it is fully committed to zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology, expecting its application across various layers of the protocol stack, starting with the deployment of the L1 zero-knowledge Ethereum virtual machine (zkEVM). The fastest (i.e., achievable within 1 year) and safest way to deploy is to allow validators to optionally run new clients that can verify multiple proofs generated by different zkVMs without state. The proof verification is fast, the size is concise, and downloading for verification is feasible, enabling deep defense strategies for zkVM. As long as the protocol provides a pipeline mechanism in Glamsterdam, off-chain verification can be achieved first.
In the early stages, it is expected that a small number of validators will run zero-knowledge clients, and the foundation will invest resources, gradually increasing its adoption rate. When a majority of stakeholders are willing to run it, the gas limit can be increased, allowing validators to verify proofs, which can also be used for zk-rollups. This plan can mobilize the entire zkVM industry. In order to maintain L1 security and other factors, the foundation proposed a real-time proof standard definition: 99% of mainnet blocks are completed within 10 seconds, hardware costs ≤ $100,000, power consumption ≤ 10kW, proof size ≤ 300KiB, and security ≥ 128 bits. 'Real-time proof' aims to achieve 'home proof', which means that some independent stakers currently running validators at home can choose to participate in the proof.
