According to Vitalik Buterin, the race to make zero-knowledge Ethereum fast is finished. He doesn’t mean it is nearly done. He means it is done. Now he wants the teams building these systems to stop chasing benchmarks and start proving their systems can’t break.
That marks a real change in emphasis. In this part of crypto, the number that has drawn the most attention for a long time is how quickly a team can produce a proof. Buterin is now arguing that this figure is no longer the most important one.
Buterin says the speed contest is settled
He made the remarks in a post on X congratulating the ZKsync Airbender team on reaching a new milestone. In it, the Ethereum co-founder said zkEVM teams should now put all of their attention on security.
“Big congratulations to the @zksync airbender team for this milestone. At this point, I consider the battle for speed to be definitively won, and the top priority for zkEVMs should shift fully to security. To me that means formally verifying (i) equivalence of the arithmetization to the ethereum spec (ii) a hard maximum bound on (prover cost) / (amount of gas in block) (iii) security of the proof system itself” Buterin said.
For readers new to this side of Ethereum, zkEVMs use mathematics to prove that Ethereum transactions are valid. The network’s roadmap depends more and more on zero-knowledge proofs to verify blocks, which makes the stakes higher. A fast proof that turns out to be wrong is not a performance gain. It is a liability.
The three things Buterin wants formally verified
His list is brief and precise. The first item is proof that the math underlying the proofs matches the Ethereum spec exactly. If there is any gap, a proof could end up checking something different from what Ethereum says should happen.
The second is a hard ceiling on prover cost relative to the amount of gas in a block. It is less obvious than the first, but it may matter more in practice. If proving a heavy block gets too expensive, smaller operators are forced out, and that wears away at decentralization.
The third is the security of the proof system itself. Buterin wants developers to close all three gaps before the network relies on the technology in a serious way.
The price chart, meanwhile, isn’t helping
ETH holders are getting this message at an awkward time. On the daily chart the token is trading near $2,365, roughly 15% below the late-September peak close to $2,800.
The price has fallen through the blue and cyan moving averages, which sit around $2,490 and $2,550, and is now resting on the orange average near $2,360. The next support is the black average near $2,305, just below the recent low of $2,313.
Volume is steady but not strong. The RSI is near 38, close to oversold territory, which suggests sellers are still in control. If the orange and black averages hold, a bounce could develop, and a return above $2,490 would be the first sign of a recovery.
Why traders will likely shrug, and why it still matters
This post is unlikely to move the price. Security work takes time, and a call for formal verification is not the kind of news traders tend to react to.
It does, however, set a direction. If teams follow it, Ethereum could end up with proofs that are fast, cheap and trusted, and that is what the roadmap needs in order to work. For anyone holding ETH this week, though, the level that matters is $2,305. A break below it could put the larger recovery since August at risk.