Ethereum’s Adoption of ZK Technology Accelerates with Significant Cost Reductions
Ethereum's scalability issues stem from its need for every node to redundantly re-execute transactions. In 2020, the community focused on rollups as a scaling solution. Key points include:
- Optimistic rollups gained market traction first, assuming all transactions are valid unless challenged within a seven-day period.
- Challenges with optimistic rollups included longer transaction finality and poorer user experience due to locked liquidity.
- Zk rollups, despite being technologically superior, struggled with high proof generation costs.
- By December 2023, the average cost for generating a zk proof was $80.21, but by 2025, it dropped to $1.3, a 98.4% improvement.
Advancements include:
- Introduction of zkVMs, which streamline zk development and make proof generation efficient.
- Increased competition in proof generation marketplaces leading to reduced costs.
- Implementation of proof aggregation techniques to speed up verification processes.
- Emergence of permissionless zk proof systems allowing broader participation.
- Development of zk co-processors enabling offchain computation with zk proofs.
Applications such as Frax, Azuki, Etherfi, and Gearbox are leveraging these advancements to enhance performance on Ethereum.
