One of the most frequently asked questions recently is, how to view Ethereum's narrative?
Admittedly, Ethereum focused on ICOs and the world computer in 2017, and on DeFi and the financial settlement layer in 2021. However, for the 2025 cycle, there seems to be few new narratives that can match the height of the old ones.
Perhaps ETF and Staking ETF count as half, but this is not within the control of Ethereum developers. If there is another half, it can only be ZK.
Ethereum is undoubtedly the public chain that has bet the most on ZK in the entire Crypto world.
A few days ago, Vitalik was quite excited. He officially announced on Twitter that ZKEVM has now entered the Alpha stage.
Why is Ethereum so persistent about ZK?
Actually, Ethereum's TPS is not low anymore, with the theoretical peak already increased to over 200 TPS. The main reason is that Ethereum has repeatedly raised the Gas limit.
But Ethereum also wants to maintain its proud high degree of decentralization, so it cannot push node server performance too high (refer to Solana, where a single server is about 5–10 times more expensive than an ETH server).
Therefore, the mainnet must be ZK-ified. Note, this is not about creating a few ZK L2s; this is a full ZK-ification of the L1 mainnet.
So what are the benefits after ZK-ification?
Those ETH nodes can simply verify these ZK proofs, without needing to tediously verify transactions one by one as in the past.
For example, if you are a grading teacher (node), the transactions are the students' exam papers.
In the past, manually grading papers was slow. But since the invention of the answer sheet (ZK-ification)神器, the machine calculates the total score in a second, so as a teacher, aren't you much more relaxed?
You are relaxed; in the past, one person could only grade 50 papers, but now they can grade 1000. The person is the same, but efficiency skyrockets.
Therefore, Ethereum must first ZK-ify the mainnet, and then it can significantly raise the Gas limit again.
ZK-ification itself does not directly increase TPS; it is a prerequisite. Improving performance still relies on raising the Gas limit, but after ZK-ification, nodes do not need to increase server costs much, making the代价很小.
After the recent Fusaka upgrade (especially the PeerDAS upgrade) performed well, Ethereum has taken another step closer to mainnet ZK-ification, which is why Vitalik is so excited.
Imagine a mainnet with TPS breaking thousands; for Ethereum, that indeed counts as a decent narrative.
Someone raised a question:
If Ethereum itself builds a ZK-EVM for the mainnet, are other ZK teams still meaningful?
First, the conclusion is, they are still meaningful.
Why?
First, ZK engineering is one of the most difficult developments in the entire network, sitting at the same table as FHE. It requires a large number of cryptography talents.
It is believed that the ETH Foundation has some reserves in this area, but as an open-source community, Ethereum adheres to the philosophy that many hands make light work. It needs a large number of third-party ZK teams for trial, error, and innovation. In return, Ethereum will give substantial support.
Second, there are four types of ZK-EVM, from type 1 to type 4. Several groups, including Polygon, Scroll, ZKsync, and Taiko, are like each认领任务,分别实现其中一个类型.
Additionally, there is ZK-VM, such as Brevis.
In fact, ZK-VM's position is even more stable compared to ZK-EVM.
The reason is that among the four major ZK-EVM types, it is highly likely that one with the best cost-performance ratio will eventually be chosen to become part of the designated solution for Ethereum's mainnet ZK-EVM, which may affect the other three.
However, for ZK-VM, it is not EVM-compatible by nature, so it will definitely be part of Ethereum's diversity.
Moreover, since VM is not constrained by EVM limitations, its performance can run very high. Ethereum's ZK-EVM poses no threat to it; instead, the Ethereum official will continue to encourage it.
For example, Vitalik previously specifically mentioned the performance of Brevis's ZK-VM and expressed期待它们进入 ZK-EVM 领域.
What about L2?There might be some impact, but it's still not significant.
Vitalik once said when discussing Polygon that ZK and L2 should be separated比较好.
The ZK-ified L1 will certainly attract back some users from ZK L2s. After all, if L1 is cheap enough, the number of users on L2 may decrease.
But think about it the other way: if L1 is the foundation and L2 is the skyscraper, the foundation must be as solid as possible. So, if the L1 mainnet is ZK-ified, L2 fees will also decrease, which is beneficial.
Moreover, in that tweet, Vitalik also specifically mentioned Brevis, which works on ZK-VM. The reason is that much of Brevis's ZK work is not limited to L2, meaning "ZK research and L2 research are separated."
For example, they have a ZK computing power market, helping with ZK-ified reward distribution for Uniswap's hooks, which is application-driven.
In summary, Ethereum has been online for 10 years now, and the slogan of ZK-ification has been proposed for five or six years. After continuous cultivation, ZK-ification has finally entered the Alpha stage. This is thanks to the continuous investment from Ethereum and numerous third-party ZK teams including Brevis and Polygon.
