Author: imToken

Editor’s Note: Ethereum is moving towards a new era of scaling 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 of the "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" can become the ultimate form of ZK scaling.

If ZK transformation is the starting point of Ethereum's technological reconstruction, then "real-time proving" and "native Rollup" are the core landing segments of this scaling revolution.

In this article, we will continue to explore how to achieve 12-second level ZK real-time proving on the Ethereum mainnet, the hardware thresholds and incentive mechanisms for becoming a Prover, and how native Rollup will reshape the landscape of Ethereum L2.

01. Real-Time Proving: A Key Piece of the Ethereum Scaling Puzzle

On the roadmap for Ethereum to reach 10,000 TPS, there is an indispensable technical breakthrough: real-time proving.

Uma Roy, co-founder of Succinct, explains: "Real-time proving refers to the ability to complete the generation process of a 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 can incorporate its block verification logic into the protocol itself and almost "arbitrarily" increase the Gas limit without sacrificing verifiability, thus achieving large-scale scaling of L1 (Editor’s 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, achieving real-time proving requires more than just zkVM technology; changes to the Ethereum protocol layer are also necessary.

Ladislaus from the Ethereum Foundation points 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 true real-time processing.

In terms of technical implementation, Succinct has released its latest SP1 Hypercube zkVM, which can generate proofs in real-time for 93% of the 10,000 mainnet blocks under a cluster of 200 GPUs.

Roy states they are confident in increasing this success rate to 99% by the end of this year. Although some difficult-to-handle blocks may still lead to a few blocks not generating proofs in time, fault tolerance mechanisms have been considered in the protocol design, such as allowing the skipping of that block to continue processing the next block.

Furthermore, Ethereum is also considering reducing the block time from 12 seconds to 6 seconds (as another potential proposal for Glamsterdam), which would significantly enhance user experience and transaction confirmation speed, but it also adds extra pressure on ZK Provers—doubling the difficulty of the task for them.

However, Roy is not worried, as ZK technology improves performance by ten times each year, and even with halved block times, it can cope.

In June, Linea also announced that its network can achieve 100% on-chain activity covered by ZK proofs. 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 has a block interval of only 2 seconds, and ZK proofs are uploaded to Ethereum L1 for verification via smart contracts. This model may very well be a precursor to the future "ZK transformation" of the mainnet.

02. Is the Hardware Threshold for Ethereum ZK Provers High?

To generate ZK proofs in real-time, powerful computing resources are essential.

The Ethereum Foundation currently sets an initial technical goal for Provers: to keep hardware costs under $100,000 and power consumption below 10 kilowatts, roughly equivalent to the power consumption level of a Tesla Powerwall home battery.

This figure may not sound "lightweight." Ethereum critic Justin Bons (founder of Cyber Capital) has called it "a crazy hardware requirement far exceeding that of Solana validation nodes," but this actually confuses two completely different roles.

Ladislaus from the Ethereum Foundation's protocol coordination team points out that the responsibilities of Provers and Validators are different and should not be conflated—Validators run nodes and participate in consensus; whereas the task of Provers is to generate ZK proofs. Once a ZK proof for a transaction is correctly generated, the network only needs to verify whether that proof is correct, without needing to re-execute the transaction.

Because of this, Ladislaus expresses optimism, stating, "As long as we can find an honest Prover that meets the hardware conditions, Ethereum can continue to operate securely. We intentionally set the threshold below that of data centers, so even individuals with technical capabilities can run Provers at home."

Currently, this $100,000 hardware configuration is just an initial target. Ethereum Foundation researcher Sophia Gold expects that by the time of the Devconnect Argentina developer conference in November this year, mainstream Provers are likely to meet the target.

Succinct co-founder Roy anticipates that by early next year, GPU requirements can be reduced to around 16 graphics cards, with total costs controlled between $10,000 and $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 the participant with the shortest time and lowest cost 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. Switching the Mainnet 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 nearly the same level as the transition from proof of work (PoW) to proof of stake (PoS) in 2022. The entire process requires not only a reconstruction of the protocol layer but also careful consideration of various potential edge cases and security risks to prevent network interruptions.

At an EthProofs conference in July, researcher Justin Drake mentioned several possible risk hazards. For example, malicious attackers might insert so-called "prover killers" into blocks, leading to a failure of the entire network's verification mechanism; or a sudden drop in network activity could result in transaction fee revenues being insufficient to cover the costs of generating ZK proofs, thus affecting network sustainability.

Ladislaus from the Ethereum Foundation's protocol coordination team states that the entire transition process may take several years, especially focusing 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 the introduction of diverse proof systems, improved incentive mechanisms, and formal verification.

At the same time, Ethereum also plans a fundamental architectural reconstruction of its consensus layer, aiming to build a new structure called "Beam Chain," designed from the outset to be ZK-optimized. Drake even states that in the future, the entire data verification work of Ethereum could be completed on the CPU of a regular laptop.

04. Mainnet "Snark Transformation": Native Rollup is Coming

As Ethereum integrates zkEVM into the mainnet, another long-term vision is gradually emerging: native Rollup.

Current Rollups (whether Optimistic or ZK type) use independent proof systems, with their security relying on their own validators or sequencer mechanisms, which involves a certain level of trust assumption with the Ethereum mainnet.

The vision of "native Rollup" is entirely different—by integrating zkEVM into the mainnet, allowing Ethereum L1 validators to directly verify the state transition proofs of Rollups, thus achieving true L2 verification and security guaranteed by the mainnet.

This requires adding a key piece of code "execute precompile" in the Ethereum L1 client, allowing validators to directly verify the ZK state transition proofs generated by L2, as Ladislaus from the Ethereum Foundation's protocol coordination team states, "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 a native Rollup, its final settlement and security will be guaranteed by the same group of Ethereum validators, with the level of trust being completely equivalent.

This means that depositing $10 million on a native Rollup will have the same security as directly depositing it on the Ethereum mainnet.

Declan Fox, the project lead for Linea, states that their long-term goal is to become a native Rollup, which he believes is an "upgraded version" of the ETH 2.0 sharding solution—not rigidly running 64 structurally identical shard chains, but building a heterogeneous Rollup system in a highly programmable and customizable way to serve different scenarios and user needs.

Unlike the past ETH 2.0 homogeneous sharding architecture, 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 the Ethereum roadmap, with the official launch of zkEVM and the gradual reconstruction of the L1 architecture, setting up its preset interfaces and precompiled logic has clearly become a foreseeable technical trend.

Ladislaus summarizes, "In integrating EVM Snark transformation (i.e., integrating ZK proof capabilities) and advancing native Rollup, Ethereum has a high degree of technical synergy, as both share the underlying ZK technology stack." Of course, this process still needs to go through Ethereum community governance, form an EIP (Ethereum Improvement Proposal), and ultimately be deployed in a hard fork.

Optimistically, if everything goes smoothly, relevant EIPs may be submitted by the end of the year and launched in the fork after the Glamsterdam upgrade.

However, this timeline remains highly uncertain and should be viewed with caution.

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