Ethereum’s faster proofs face Vitalik’s next test: a hard cost limit
Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum needs a hard bound on the proving resources required per unit of block gas, so independent provers can plan for worst-case blocks rather than typical workloads. ZKsync reported that one GPU proved 99% of a sample of 7,200 Ethereum blocks in under 10 seconds, but benchmark results do not guarantee performance on deliberately difficult blocks. EIP-7904’s analysis targets CPU execution and does not cover ZK proof generation. Research finds proving costs vary by operation and prover, while a dependable limit would need explicit workloads, hardware, security settings and deadlines. Possible approaches include optimizing expensive operations, weighted ZK-gas limits or repricing opcodes; each carries design trade-offs. Existing proof-related proposals remain drafts, and mandatory proofs are not imminent.
