Vitalik Buterin Urges zkEVM Teams to Prioritize Security

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin urged developers of zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines, or zkEVMs, to make security their top priority after ZKsync announced a prover test that met Ethereum’s real-time target for 99% of 7,200 consecutive mainnet blocks.

ZKsync announced Oct. 13 that one NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU proved 99% of the blocks in less than 10 seconds each, including witness preparation. All 7,200 blocks in the sample were proved in under 12 seconds.

The real-time proving target is at least 99% of mainnet blocks in 10 seconds or less. Ethereum’s slot time is 12 seconds, and network propagation is estimated at up to about 1.5 seconds. The target is designed to fit proof generation within a slot while allowing time for propagation. The benchmark measures speed; it does not establish whether a zkEVM is secure.

ZKsync describes Airbender Prime as a hash-based STARK system combining GKR sumcheck, WHIR polynomial commitments and BLAKE2s hashing. The prover follows the open RISC-V standard and includes a standalone verifier. ZKsync plans to use Keccak-256-based commitments for Layer 1 proofs instead of BN254 pairings.

ZKsync’s protocol includes zero-knowledge Layer 2 rollups and validiums. In a ZK rollup, transactions execute off-chain and a validity proof is submitted to Ethereum. The benchmark concerns how quickly a prover handles Ethereum blocks; Buterin’s recommendations address security questions that the timing result does not answer.

In an Oct. 15 post, Buterin wrote, “At this point, I consider the battle for speed to be definitively won, and the top priority for zkEVMs should shift fully to security.”

He also called for formal verification that zkEVMs match Ethereum’s specification, a hard maximum on prover costs relative to block gas, and scrutiny of the proof system’s own security. The speed test does not show whether a zkEVM follows Ethereum’s specification or whether its proof system is secure.