The co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, recognized a major breakthrough in Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology this week, calling recent real-time developments proving a “really incredible” step.
Buerin’s comments came in response to an article by the developer Uma Roy, who announced that his team had produced Ethereum in real time, a realization of many members of the cryptography community had considered a “bithot” just a year ago.
Performance gaps and obstacles to verification
The post of Roy, who won an important traction on social networks, led the milestone as a decisive moment for the ZK field.
However, some observers, including researcher Zeng Jiajun, asked if the Prouvance system was as revolutionary as it seemed, given the past projections that this performance was in the years.
While celebrating the advance, Buterin highlighted several reasons why the work, although impressive, should not be considered ready for production for the layer 1 of Ethereum.
He noted that the current Prouvance system only represents average cases of cases and does not yet deal with the performance of the worst case, which is necessary for the reliable and secure implementation of layer 1.
He also pointed out the lack of formal verification, which means that the system has not undergone rigorous mathematical proof to guarantee its accuracy.
Vitalik suggested that this remains a critical gap in the high -challenged environment of Ethereum, where code immutability and financial risk are essential.
Energy consumption objectives and scaling
Another concern raised by Buterin was the energy consumption of the system. The prover in real time would have used approximately 100 kilowatts of power, which makes it impassable for general or at home.
Buterin said that, ideally, such systems should be operational on machines with approximately 10 kilowatts of capacity to ensure wider decentralization and accessibility, because Prouvance could be carried out at home.
He also referred to the long -term Ethereum scaling objectives, specifically plans to increase the gas limit from layer 1 from 10x to 100x.
The realization of such a drastic increase in the limit would require significant optimization in the prouvance of performance, strengthening its argument that technology still has several stages before it can be deployed at the level of the basic protocol.
Despite these warnings, Buterin reaffirmed his admiration for Roy and the work of his team, describing it as an important step in the ZK landscape. However, he also noted that there was more to do before Ethereum could fully integrate this progress into its central infrastructure.
