Author: imToken
Reprint: White55, Mars Finance
Ethereum is moving towards a new era of scalability with 10,000 TPS, and zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology is becoming a key driving force. This article is the second part of our compilation (Ethereum 10,000 TPS roadmap), focusing on the technical challenges of real-time proving, the participation logic of Provers, security challenges during the L1 switching process, and how 'native Rollup' could become the ultimate form of ZK scalability.
If ZK implementation is the starting point for the technological reconstruction of Ethereum, then 'real-time proving' and 'native Rollup' are the core landing stages of this scalability revolution.
In this article, we will continue to explore how to achieve 12-second ZK real-time proofs on the Ethereum mainnet, what the hardware threshold and incentive mechanisms for becoming a Prover are, and how native Rollup will reshape the landscape of Ethereum L2.
01. Real-time proving: the key puzzle for Ethereum's scalability
On Ethereum's roadmap to 10,000 TPS, there is an indispensable technical breakthrough point: real-time proving.
Succinct co-founder Uma Roy explained: "Real-time proving refers to the ability to complete the generation process of ZK proof for a block on the Ethereum mainnet in less than 12 seconds."
What does this mean? Once real-time proving is achieved, Ethereum will be able to incorporate its block verification logic into the protocol itself and, without sacrificing verifiability, nearly 'arbitrarily' raise the Gas limit, thus achieving large-scale scalability for L1 (Note: The generation time for each block on the Ethereum mainnet is 12 seconds, so 'real-time' refers to completing the proof within each block cycle).
However, to achieve real-time proving, relying solely on zkVM technology is not enough; changes to the Ethereum protocol layer are also needed.
Ladislaus from the Ethereum Foundation pointed out that a key mechanism is expected to be introduced in next year's Glamsterdam upgrade—"decoupling block validation from immediate execution," which will provide Provers with more time to generate zkEVM proofs within a complete slot, thus achieving real-time processing.
In terms of technical implementation, Succinct has released its latest SP1 Hypercube zkVM, which, under a cluster of 200 GPUs, can generate proofs in real-time for 93% of the 10,000 mainnet blocks.
Roy stated that they are confident in raising the success rate to 99% by the end of this year. Although some difficult-to-handle blocks may still cause a very small number of blocks to fail to generate proofs in a timely manner, fault tolerance mechanisms have already been considered in the protocol design, such as allowing skipping that block to continue processing into the next block.
Furthermore, Ethereum is also considering shortening the block time from 12 seconds to 6 seconds (as another potential proposal for Glamsterdam), which will significantly enhance user experience and transaction confirmation speed. However, this also puts additional pressure on ZK Provers—doubling the difficulty of the task for them.
However, Roy is not worried; after all, ZK technology's performance can improve tenfold each year, and even if the block time is halved, it can cope.
In June, Linea also announced that it can achieve 100% on-chain activities covered by ZK proofs on its network. Although Linea's current TPS is only 2, this is not a performance limitation but rather constrained by usage demand.
It is worth noting that Linea's block interval is only 2 seconds, and ZK proofs are uploaded to Ethereum L1 for verification through smart contracts. This model may be a precursor to the future mainnet 'ZKification'.
02. Is the hardware threshold for Ethereum ZK Provers high?
To generate ZK proofs in real-time, powerful computing resources are certainly indispensable.
The initial technical goal set by the Ethereum Foundation for Provers is to keep hardware costs under $100,000 and power consumption below 10 kilowatts, which is roughly equivalent to the power consumption level of a Tesla Powerwall home battery.
This figure doesn't sound 'lightweight'; Ethereum critic Justin Bons (founder of Cyber Capital) called it 'insane hardware requirements far exceeding those of Solana's verification nodes,' but this actually confuses two entirely different roles.
Ladislaus from the Ethereum Foundation's protocol coordination team pointed out that the responsibilities of Provers and Validators are different and should not be conflated—the Validator runs nodes and participates in consensus; while the Prover's task is to generate ZK proofs. Once the ZK proof for a transaction is correctly generated, the network only needs to verify whether that proof is correct, rather than re-executing the transaction.
Because of this, Ladislaus expressed optimism, stating, "As long as we can find an honest prover that meets the hardware requirements, Ethereum can continue to operate safely. We intentionally set the threshold below that of data centers, and even individuals who are technically capable can run Prover at home, even if they are not large institutions or data centers."
Currently, this $100,000 hardware configuration is just an initial goal. Ethereum Foundation researcher Sophia Gold expects that by November this year, before the Devconnect developer conference in Argentina, mainstream Provers are expected to reach the standard.
Succinct co-founder Roy expects that by early next year, GPU requirements can be reduced to around 16 graphics cards, with total costs controlled between $10,000 to $30,000.
Meanwhile, Succinct has already built a decentralized network composed of 'hundreds of Provers' on the testnet, generating millions of proofs cumulatively.
The core logic of this system is competitive proving, where all Provers participate in bidding, selecting one winner each round to execute the zk proof, aiming for participants with shorter times and lower costs to win, forming a computational power bidding mechanism.
This means that in the ZK-driven future of Ethereum, the spirit of miners will reappear in another form—only the role shifts from computing blocks to computing proofs.
03. The mainnet switching to ZK architecture: a high-difficulty system migration
Switching the Ethereum L1 mainnet to a zero-knowledge proof (ZK) architecture is another technical challenge of almost the same level as the transition from proof of work (PoW) to proof of stake (PoS) in 2022. The entire process not only requires restructuring the protocol layer but also must carefully consider various potential edge cases and security risks to prevent network disruptions.
At an EthProofs meeting in July this year, researcher Justin Drake mentioned several potential risks. For example, malicious attackers might insert what's known as a 'prover killer' into the block, causing the entire network verification mechanism to fail; or a sudden drop in network activity could result in transaction fee income being insufficient to cover the costs of generating ZK proofs, thereby affecting network sustainability.
Ladislaus from the Ethereum Foundation's protocol coordination team stated that the entire transition process may take several years, especially with a focus on security risks. The ZK virtual machine (zkVM), as a complex technology still in its early stages, is likely to have various vulnerabilities. However, as the ecosystem matures, we can gradually enhance its feasibility and robustness on Ethereum L1 through measures such as proof diversity, improvements to incentive mechanisms, and formal verification.
Meanwhile, Ethereum also plans to fundamentally restructure its consensus layer by building a new structure called 'Beam Chain,' aiming to be friendly to ZK optimization from the design stage. Drake even stated that in the future, the entire data verification work of Ethereum could be completed on a regular laptop's CPU.
04. Mainnet 'Snarkification': Native Rollup is coming
While integrating zkEVM into the Ethereum mainnet, another long-term vision has also begun to gradually emerge: native Rollup.
Current Rollups (whether Optimistic or ZK type) use independent proof systems, and their security relies on their own validator or sequencer mechanisms, with a certain trust assumption between them and the Ethereum mainnet.
The vision of 'native Rollup' is completely different—by integrating zkEVM into the mainnet, allowing Ethereum L1 validators to directly verify the state transition proofs of Rollups, thus achieving true L2 that is validated by the mainnet and secured by it.
This requires adding a key piece of code 'execute precompile' to the Ethereum L1 client, allowing validators to directly verify the ZK state transition proofs generated by L2. As the Ethereum Foundation protocol coordinator Ladislaus said, 'L1 validators will consume these execution proofs of Rollups and verify their correctness.'
In other words, if native Rollup becomes a reality, then in the future, whether a transaction occurs on L1 or on native Rollup, its final settlement and security will be guaranteed by the same group of Ethereum validators, and the level of trust will be completely equivalent.
This means that depositing $10 million on native Rollup will have the same security as directly depositing on the Ethereum mainnet.
Declan Fox, the project lead of Linea, stated that their long-term goal is to become a native Rollup, which he believes is an 'upgraded version' of the ETH 2.0 sharding plan—no longer a rigid operation of 64 structurally identical shard chains but rather constructing a heterogeneous Rollup system in a highly programmable and customizable way to serve different scenarios and user needs.
Unlike the isomorphic sharding architecture of past ETH 2.0, native Rollup can be heterogeneous, providing end-users with a more diverse and differentiated application experience.
Although native Rollup has not yet been formally written into Ethereum's roadmap, with the official launch of zkEVM and the gradual restructuring of the L1 architecture, it is clear that setting up its interfaces and precompiled logic has already become a foreseeable technical trend.
Ladislaus summarized, "There is a high degree of technical synergy in Ethereum between 'Snarkifying' the EVM (i.e., integrating ZK proof capabilities) and advancing native Rollup, as both share the underlying ZK technology stack." Of course, this process still needs to go through Ethereum community governance to form EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals), and ultimately be deployed in a hard fork.
Optimistically speaking, if everything goes smoothly, the relevant EIP might be submitted by the end of the year and go live in the fork after the Glamsterdam upgrade.
However, this timeline still has a high degree of uncertainty and should be viewed with caution.
