Why Does Ethereum Urgently Need ZK Rollups?

Original Article Title: "Why Ethereum Urgently Needs ZK Rollups"

Original Source: Ebunker Chinese

One of the most frequently asked questions recently is, how should we view the narrative of Ethereum?

Indeed, Ethereum focused on ICOs and the world computer in '17, DeFi and financial settlement layer in '21. However, in this round in '25, there seems to be a new narrative that can hardly match the old narrative in scale.

Perhaps ETFs and Staking ETFs can be considered to comprise half, but these are not within the control of Ethereum developers. If we were to mention the other half, it would only be ZK.

Ethereum is indeed the most ZK-centric public chain in the entire crypto world, without a doubt.

A few days ago, Vitalik was quite excited, announcing on Twitter that ZKEVM has now entered the Alpha stage.

Why is Ethereum so obsessed with ZK?

Actually, Ethereum's TPS is not low now, and the theoretical peak has been raised to over 200 TPS, mainly due to Ethereum's multiple increases in the Gas limit.

However, there is a cost to increasing the Gas limit, and it cannot be increased endlessly. The cost is that nodes need more expensive servers to run.

Yet Ethereum wants to maintain its proud decentralization, so nodes cannot be required to have excessively high server performance (ref. One server on Solana is probably 5-10 times more expensive than one on ETH).

Therefore, the mainnet must be ZK-ified. Note, it's not as simple as creating a few ZK L2s; this is full-scale ZK rollups on L1 mainnet.

So, what are the benefits after ZK?

Those ETH nodes can easily verify these ZK proofs without needing to painstakingly validate each transaction as before.

For example, if you were a grader (node), those transactions would be the students' papers.

You used to grade papers manually, which was definitely slow. But ever since the invention of the answer sheet (ZK rollup), the machine can calculate the student's total score in a second. So as a teacher, wouldn't you be significantly more relaxed?

You are more relaxed; in the past, one person could only grade 50 papers, but now can grade 1000, still the same person, yet efficiency has skyrocketed.

Therefore, Ethereum must first ZKify the mainnet before it can further substantially increase the Gas limit.

ZKification itself does not directly increase TPS; it is a prerequisite. Improving performance still relies on raising the Gas limit, but after ZK rollup, nodes don't need to incur much additional server costs, making the cost minimal.

After the last Fusaka upgrade (especially the PeerDAS upgrade), Ethereum has run well, taking another step towards ZKifying the mainnet, which is why Vitalik is so excited.

Imagine a mainnet with TPS breaking a thousand; for Ethereum, that can indeed be considered a remarkable narrative.

Someone raised a question, if Ethereum ZK-EVMs the mainnet itself, do other ZK teams still have a purpose?

Let's start with the conclusion, they still have a purpose.

Why?

First, ZK development is one of the most difficult engineering feats, sitting at the same table as FHE. It requires a lot of cryptographic talent.

I believe the ETH Foundation has some reserves in this area, but as an open-source community, Ethereum's philosophy is that many hands make light work. It needs a large number of third-party ZK teams to experiment and innovate. In return, Ethereum will provide a lot of support.

Secondly, ZK-EVM has four types, from type1 to type4. Various teams, including Polygon, Scroll, ZKsync, and Taiko, are like different squads each claiming a task, all working to implement one of the types.

Additionally, there is ZK-VM, such as Brevis.

In fact, ZK-VM's status is even more stable compared to ZK-EVM.

The reason is that out of the four major ZK-EVM types mentioned above, eventually, there will likely emerge a solution with the best cost-effectiveness, becoming part of the designated solution for the Ethereum mainnet ZK-EVM, which may then affect the other three.

However, in the case of ZK-VM, since it is not EVM-compatible, it will definitely be part of Ethereum's diversity.

Moreover, since VM is not constrained by EVM limitations, its performance will be very high. Ethereum's ZK-EVM poses no threat to it; instead, the Ethereum team will continue to encourage it.

For example, Vitalik previously specifically mentioned the performance of Brevis' ZK-VM and looks forward to their entry into the ZK-EVM field.

What about L2? It may have some impact, but still not significant.

When talking about Polygon, Vitalik once said that ZK and L2 should probably be compared separately.

ZK-ized L1 will definitely attract back some users from ZK L2. After all, if L1 is cheap enough, there may be fewer users on L2.

Looking at it the other way, for example, if L1 is the foundation and L2 is a skyscraper. The stronger the foundation, the better, so if the L1 mainnet is ZK-ized, L2 will also reduce fees, which is beneficial.

Additionally, in that same article, Vitalik specifically mentioned Brevis, which is working on ZK-VM. The reason is that Brevis' ZK work goes beyond L2, meaning "ZK research and L2 research are separate."

For example, they have a market for ZK compute power, helping Uniswap's rollups with ZK reward distribution, which can be considered application-driven.

Overall, Ethereum has been live for 10 years now, and the slogan of ZK-ing has been around for about five to six years. After years of hard work, ZK-ing has finally entered the Alpha stage, thanks to the continuous efforts of Ethereum and numerous third-party ZK teams, including Brevis and Polygon.

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