Among Ethereum’s various scaling solutions, Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology represents one of the most complex yet promising approaches. Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation have heavily invested in ZK development, viewing it as a crucial long-term investment despite its current uncertainties. The recent Kohaku roadmap released by the Ethereum Foundation, which outlines components for a privacy-focused wallet, again emphasized the dependency on ZK-EVM/ZK-VM implementation for advanced functionality. Ethereum’s pressing need for ZK-VM stems from performance requirements that don’t sacrifice security. The most immediate method to enhance Ethereum’s performance involves increasing the gas limit, effectively expanding block sizes. However, this approach carries significant drawbacks as larger blocks impose heavier burdens on network nodes. Ethereum currently operates on a “full validation by all” model where every node must completely validate each block. While straightforward, this method creates substantial redundancy. With Ethereum’s 12-second block time, which must accommodate global propagation delays and MEV extraction activities, validators actually have only 4-8 seconds to receive and verify blocks, limiting their validation capacity. Implementing ZK technology across Ethereum’s Layer 1 would transform this to a “single validation for all” model. After block assembly, a ZK proof would be generated. While ZK proof generation is computationally intensive, verification is extremely fast. This means each block only needs one ZK proof generation, with all nodes simply verifying the proof’s validity. This transformation would enable significant gas limit increases without proportionally increasing node burdens. Using an analogy: the current system resembles requiring every manager to personally verify an employee’s remaining vacation days, while the ZK-based system would automatically confirm vacation availability with managers simply trusting the verification result. The engineering challenge remains substantial due to the advanced cryptography involved, requiring collaboration between Ethereum and specialized teams. The Brevis protocol serves as a leading example, currently demonstrating the fastest ZK proof generation capabilities. Brevis’s Pico Prism technology achieves remarkable performance metrics: using 64 RTX 5090 GPUs, it generates proofs for 99.6% of Ethereum blocks within 12 seconds and 96.8% within 10 seconds at the current 45M gas limit. This performance is particularly significant given Ethereum’s decentralization requirements, which limit proof generation hardware costs to under $100,000. The 10-second coverage metric proves critical because MEV blocks typically require 1-3 seconds for generation, leaving approximately 10 seconds for proof generation to fit within the 12-second block time. In summary: – Ethereum L1 scaling requires gas limit increases – Gas limit increases necessitate ZK implementation – Efficient ZK implementation (sub-10-second proofs under $100,000 hardware costs) demands collaborative efforts across the cryptography community