Due to Kevaundray Wedderburn, Alex Stokes, Tim Beiko, Mary Maller, Alexander Hicks, George Kadianakis, Dankrad Feist, and Justin Drake for suggestions and overview.
Ethereum goes all in on ZK. Ultimately we count on emigrate to utilizing ZK proofs in any respect ranges of the stack, from consensus layer signature aggregation to onchain privateness with consumer facet proving, and upgrade the protocol to be simpler and more zk-friendly. However step one shall be an L1 zkEVM.
How we are able to ship an L1 zkEVM in lower than a 12 months
The quickest and most secure method to ship an L1 zkEVM is to begin by giving validators the choice to run purchasers that, slightly than re-executing execution payloads, statelessly confirm a number of (let’s say three) proofs generated by totally different zkVMs every proving totally different EVM implementations. As a result of proof verification is so quick and proof measurement so succinct, downloading and verifying a number of proofs may be very affordable and permits us to use the identical protection in depth as present consumer variety to zkVMs.
For this plan to initially confirm execution proofs offchain, all we’d like from the protocol is a few type of pipelining in Glamsterdam to permit for extra proving time.
Initially, we count on few validators to run ZK purchasers. Over time, their safety shall be demonstrated in manufacturing. With the EF additionally placing assets into formal verification, specification writing, audits, and bug bounties; we count on adoption will slowly improve.
When a supermajority of stake is comfy working ZK purchasers, we are able to improve the gasoline restrict to a stage that will require validators working affordable {hardware} to confirm proofs as an alternative of re-executing blocks. As soon as all validators are verifying execution proofs, the identical proofs can be utilized by an EXECUTE precompile for native zk-rollups.
Defining realtime proving for the L1
Our best benefit in executing this plan is the power to harness the complete zkVM trade in the direction of making Ethereum by far the most important ZK software on the earth. Many zkVMs are already proving Ethereum blocks and efficiency breakthroughs are being introduced on a weekly foundation.
In an effort to keep the safety, liveness, and censorship-resistance properties of the L1 the Ethereum Basis is proposing a standardized definition of realtime proving for zkVM groups to work in the direction of.
On the proof system facet, zkVMs concentrating on realtime proving ought to intention for 128 bits of safety, which we take into account the suitable long-term goal for Ethereum L1. Nonetheless, we’re keen to just accept a minimal of 100 bits of safety within the preliminary months of deployment, to accommodate short-term engineering challenges in reaching 128 bits. Proof measurement ought to stay below 300KiB and should not depend on recursive wrappers that use trusted setups. We count on proof techniques to maneuver to 128-bit safety by the point ZK purchasers are in manufacturing and to additional tighten safety necessities (e.g. concerning conjectures) as proving time decreases.
With the present slot time of 12 seconds and most time to propagate information throughout the community of ~1.5 seconds, realtime means 10 seconds or much less. We count on zkVMs to have the ability to show at the least 99% of mainnet blocks on this window, with the tail finish (in addition to artificial DOS vectors) mitigated in future arduous forks.
In an effort to keep the best ranges of liveness and censorship resistance, our definition of realtime proving goals to allow “residence proving” with the concept that among the solo stakers who at the moment run validators from residence will opt-in to proving. Despite the fact that we count on to harden censorship resistance by enforced transaction inclusion earlier than verifying ZK proofs is made obligatory, residence proving is a crucial ultimate safeguard.
Since proving within the cloud is already fairly low cost with multi-GPU spot situations, the main target for zkVM groups concentrating on realtime proving will largely be optimizing for working provers on-prem the place the specs are way more constrained. On-prem realtime proving ought to require a most capital expenditure of 100k USD (at time of writing it requires ~$80k in stake to run a validator). We count on this to return down over time even because the gasoline restrict is elevated.
Greater than {hardware} value, essentially the most important constraint for residence proving utilizing GPUs is power utilization. Most residential properties have at the least 10kW getting into from the road and a few can have circuits supposed for electrical home equipment or charging electrical autos with 10kW capability. Due to this fact, realtime proving have to be potential on {hardware} working at 10kW or much less.
This brings us to our working definition of realtime proving:
- Latency: <= 10s for P99 of mainnet blocks
- On-prem CAPEX: <= 100k USD
- On-prem energy: <= 10kW
- Code: Totally open supply
- Safety: >= 128 bits
- Proof measurement: <= 300KiB with no trusted setups
The race to realtime
Between now and Devconnect Argentina, we hope to see zkVM groups proceed innovating in the direction of realtime residence proving, and for the main zkVMs to turn into future core infrastructure for Ethereum.
