Vitalik Buterin Says the Primary Task of zkEVM Should Fully Shift to Security
Vitalik Buterin stated that the primary task of zkEVM should now fully shift to security. He believes that after the ZKsync Airbender milestone, the speed race has been decisively won.
Vitalik congratulated the ZKsync Airbender team in a post on X. He claimed that the speed battle has been definitively won, and zkEVM should fully focus on security. This specifically includes formal verification of arithmetic and equivalence to Ethereum specifications, a hard limit on the ratio of prover costs to total block gas, and the security of the proof system itself.
ZKsync launched Airbender Prime on October 13. The system completed proofs for 99% of 7200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks within 10 seconds on a single NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU (including witness preparation), with all blocks completed within 12 seconds. Airbender Prime is based on RISC-V, uses hash-based STARK, and is aimed at post-quantum security. It leads in proof time, GPU efficiency, and cost on the ETHproofs public leaderboard.
Funding is shifting from pursuing proof speed to formal verification and cost boundaries. After Airbender achieved real-time proof on a single GPU, other zkEVM teams face a narrowing speed gap. Vitalik is shifting priorities from performance to specification equivalence, proof cost limits, and proof system security. Reliance on high-speed but unverified equivalence proof systems is under pressure.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Vitalik has long focused on zkEVM and Ethereum's scaling path. He has previously discussed client proofs and post-quantum directions. After ZKsync Airbender achieved real-time proof on a single GPU, he publicly stated that the speed race is over.
He is directing resources towards formal verification of arithmetic and equivalence to Ethereum specifications, hard limits on proof costs relative to block gas, and the security of the proof system itself. Airbender uses hash-based STARK and RISC-V, lowering hardware thresholds. The ETHproofs leaderboard shows its lead in proof time and efficiency.
A similar shift towards formal verification and security boundaries after achieving performance milestones has been observed in other zero-knowledge proof systems. Currently, zkEVM is at a stage where speed targets are met, and security verification becomes the next phase.
Essentially, this reflects a shift in technological alternatives and regulatory changes. Formal verification replaces pure performance competition. The mechanism is that once real-time proof on a single GPU makes speed no longer the main bottleneck, system correctness, cost boundaries, and proof system security become constraints, shifting zkEVM from pursuing faster proofs to ensuring verifiable paths that are equivalent to Ethereum specifications and cost-controlled.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
After achieving speed milestones, zkEVM's priority shifts from performance to formal verification
Real-time proof on a single GPU makes proof costs and specification equivalence the next constraints
Proof system security replaces the speed race, becoming a long-term condition for protocol integrity