In today’s news, Joe Lubin, CEO of Consensys and co-founder of Ethereum, said that ETH could become a fully zero-knowledge proof-based protocol within 3-5 years, anchoring this prediction to the Skinny Ethereum proposal from Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake that targets over 10,000 transactions per second on mainnet via native ZK verification at layer 1.
Lubin’s remarks come as Ethereum Layer 1 continues to face throughput pressure and Vitalik Buterin has publicly backed away from characterizing rollups as a permanent architectural destination, with Buterin saying earlier in 2026 that most L2S had become “branded shards” rather than truly differentiated execution environments.
Joe Lubin predicts that Ethereum could become a fully ZK-proof protocol within 3-5 years.
In a June 10 interview, the Ethereum co-founder said ongoing ZK innovations would strengthen the L1 while providing synchronous composability with the L2s, enabling atomic and unified execution…
– unfolded. (@cryptounfolded) June 10, 2026
The analytical question is not whether Ethereum will eventually integrate ZK proofs; it is a question of whether Lubin’s reframing of the rollup era as a deliberate strategic phase reflects a coherent long-term plan, or a retroactive narrative applied to a roadmap that has drifted further than expected.
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Ethereum News: The ZK Convergence Roadmap, What Lubin’s Framework Actually Establishes
The mechanism is bigger than the news, the Ethereum ecosystem, as part of Lubin, went through a “divergence phase” in which the rollup-centric roadmap – formalized around 2020-2021 – deliberately pushed off-chain execution to layer 2 networks like Linea and Gnosis, allowing zero-knowledge technology to mature in production environments before being reintegrated into L1.
This reintegration is what Lubin calls the “convergence phase,” in which real-time ZK that is already running on L2s migrates to the mainnet, ultimately reducing the distinction between layers into a single atomic execution context where assets move without bridges and liquidity fragmentation disappears.
The Lean Ethereum proposal, authored by Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, operationalizes this L1 convergence goal with a throughput cap of over 10,000 TPS – a figure that would represent an order of magnitude improvement over current mainnet capacity and a direct response to competing Layer 1 architectures; Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade, for example, is currently undergoing validation testing with sub-second finality as the primary metric.
Photo: Joe Lubin
It is necessary to point out here the epistemic status of several details. The phased rollout schedule, an opt-in validation phase in 2026, a mandatory transition by 2027, has been reported in corroborative coverage but has not been independently confirmed by the Ethereum Foundation at the time of publication.
What’s confirmed: EF has released plans for an optional zkEVM L1 client as a first step toward full-stack ZK integration, and Linea, built by Consensys, is already running ZK proofs in production, including synchronous composability experiments that Lubin previously described as “the holy grail of our ecosystem.” Gnosis’ Ethereum Economic Zone, developed in part by contributors from EF, pursues a similar integration, a shared execution context between L1 and L2 with tighter composability and shared security.
What remains up in the air is the pace at which making zkEVM verification mandatory at the consensus layer could accomplish the required auditing, formal verification, and client diversity work, timelines that some protocol developers estimate to be longer than Lubin’s 3-5 year window implies.
Regarding the restructuring of the Ethereum Foundation, Lubin was adamant: “There will be no second foundation. Instead, he indicated that at least three groups would emerge from the Ethereum Foundation, each focusing on distinct mandates, core protocol development, usability and scalability, and institutional outreach, while the FE itself would be limited to what Lubin called its component “CROPs.” This organizational segmentation is not positioned as instability but as preparation for the coordination requirements of a heavy protocol transition in ZK.
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Daniel Frances is a technical writer and Web3 educator specializing in macroeconomics and DeFi mechanics. Hailing from crypto since 2017, Daniel leverages his experience in on-chain analytics to write evidence-based reports and in-depth guides. He holds certifications from the Blockchain Council and is dedicated to providing “insight gain” that overcomes market hype to find real utility for blockchain.
