{"id":11263,"date":"2023-04-02T10:18:08","date_gmt":"2023-04-02T10:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/?p=11263"},"modified":"2023-04-02T10:18:09","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T10:18:09","slug":"vitalik-buterin-reveals-major-challenge-for-ethereums-future-and-how-to-solve-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/?p=11263","title":{"rendered":"Vitalik Buterin reveals major challenge for Ethereum&#8217;s future \u2013 and how to solve it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\r\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"totafreearti-20\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"search\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\r\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\r\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = \"crypto\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\r\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\r\namzn_assoc_title = \"\";\r\namzn_assoc_rows =\"1\";\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<h2>Ad<\/h2>\n<p>Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin shared his musing on an \u201cunderdiscussed, but nevertheless very important\u201d aspect of the Ethereum ecosystem in a recent blog post this weekend.<\/p>\n<p>The post entitled \u201cHow will Ethereum\u2019s multi-client philosophy interact with ZK-EVMs?\u201d focused on the technical challenges, trade-offs, and potential solutions for creating a multi-client ecosystem for ZK-EVMs.<\/p>\n<h2>The multi-client problem with Zk-EVMs<\/h2>\n<p>Vitalik believes ZK-EVMs will evolve to become an essential part of Ethereum\u2019s layer-1 security and verification process in the future. Zero Knowledge (ZK) technology allows developers to prove the authenticity of a transaction or message without revealing any additional information. Thus, it allows one party to convince another that a message is true without disclosing any knowledge beyond the message\u2019s validity.<\/p>\n<p>However, the privacy-enforcing nature of ZK technology could disrupt the broader EVM landscape as Ethereum clients differ subtly in implementing protocol rules, according to the Ethereum Co-Founder.<\/p>\n<p>Layer 2 protocols in ZK rollups have successfully used ZK proofs and helped scale Ethereum by bundling multiple transactions into a single proof. However, as ZK-EVMs evolve to verify execution on Mainnet, \u201cZK-EVMs de-facto become a third type of Ethereum client, just as important to the network\u2019s security as execution clients and consensus clients are today.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Viewing ZK-EVMs as a third type of Ethereum client raises the following question from Vitalik,<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow would we actually make a \u201cmulti-client\u201d ecosystem for ZK-proving correctness of Ethereum blocks?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As the ecosystem scales, Vitalik wants to maintain the benefits of the \u201cmulti-client philosophy\u201d while also leveraging the capabilities of ZK-EVMs to improve the scalability, security, and decentralization of the Ethereum network.<\/p>\n<p>The main technical challenges of using ZK technology with multiple clients relate to latency and data inefficiency, according to Vitalik. In addition, individual Ethereum clients handle zero-knowledge proofs differently due to specific interpretations of protocol rules or ZK-EVM implementations.<\/p>\n<h2>ZK-EVM multi-client solutions<\/h2>\n<p>Despite these challenges, Vitalik believes that creating an open multi-client ZK-EVM ecosystem is feasible and beneficial for Ethereum\u2019s security and decentralization.<\/p>\n<p>Below is a visual representation of the various clients used across the consensus and execution layers of the Ethereum ecosystem.<\/p>\n<p>Source: vitalik.eth.limo<\/p>\n<p>Vitalik argued that having multiple clients increases the security and decentralization of the network by reducing the risk of a single catastrophic bug in one implementation, which could lead to a breakdown of the entire network. Additionally, a multi-client philosophy helps to prevent the concentration of power within one development team or organization, promoting political decentralization.<\/p>\n<p>Vitalik presented three potential solutions to the issue, as shown below.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cSingle ZK-EVM: abandon the multi-client paradigm, and choose a single ZK-EVM that we use to verify blocks.<\/strong><strong>Closed multi ZK-EVM: agree on and enshrine in consensus a specific set of multiple ZK-EVMs, and have a consensus-layer protocol rule that a block needs proofs from more than half of the ZK-EVMs in that set to be considered valid.<\/strong><strong>Open multi ZK-EVM: different clients have different ZK-EVM implementations, and each client waits for a proof that is compatible with its own implementation before accepting a block as valid.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the context of ZK-EVMs, Vitalik supports the idea of an open multi-client ZK-EVM ecosystem. Different clients have different ZK-EVM implementations, and each client waits for proof compatible with its own before accepting a block as valid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo me, (3) seems ideal, at least until and unless our technology improves to the point where we can formally prove that all of the ZK-EVM implementations are equivalent to each other\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, once the technology has improved to the point where ZK-EVM implementations are somewhat standardized, Vitalik argued that the solution will be to choose the most efficient option. He believes the \u201cchallenges [for option 3] seem smaller than the challenges of the other two options, at least for now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Vitalik also nodded to the recent rapid advancement in AI, stating that progress in AI could \u201csuper-charge\u201d the development of proving ZK-EVM implementations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the longer-term future, of course anything could happen. Perhaps AI will super-charge formal verification to the point where it can easily prove ZK-EVM implementations equivalent and identify all the bugs that cause differences between them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\r\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"totafreearti-20\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"search\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\r\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\r\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = \"bitcoin\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\r\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\r\namzn_assoc_title = \"\";\r\namzn_assoc_rows =\"1\";\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cryptoslate.com\/vitalik-buterin-reveals-major-challenge-for-ethereums-future-and-how-to-solve-it\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ad Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin shared his musing on an \u201cunderdiscussed, but nevertheless very important\u201d aspect of the Ethereum ecosystem in a recent blog post this weekend. The post entitled \u201cHow will Ethereum\u2019s multi-client philosophy interact with ZK-EVMs?\u201d focused on the technical challenges, trade-offs, and potential solutions for creating a multi-client ecosystem for ZK-EVMs. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethereum-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11265,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11263\/revisions\/11265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}