Vitalik: We need to push the limits of the protocol with cryptography while optimizing efficiency and enhancing security

ChainCatcher news, at the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivered a keynote speech titled "Reaching the Limits of Protocol Design" at the "Web3 Scholars Summit 2024" hosted by DRK Lab. He stated that current technologies such as ZK-SNARKs, MPC, and FHE have efficiency and security issues. Specifically, the Ethereum slot block time is 12 seconds, the "normal" block verification time is about 400 milliseconds, and the ZK-SNARK proof time is approximately 20 minutes. Ethereum's goal is to achieve real-time proof. Regarding the current inefficiency issues, Vitalik suggested solutions such as "Parallelization + aggregation trees," using SNARK algorithms and hashes to improve efficiency, and employing ASIC for ZK hardware acceleration.

In addition, Vitalik mentioned that "protocols based on advanced cryptography such as ZK-SNARKs, MPC, FHE (Fully Homomorphic Encryption), and BLS aggregation have developed rapidly, but they also face efficiency and security issues. The efficiency problem can be addressed through parallelization and aggregation trees, improving efficiency (using SNARK algorithms and hashes), and ASICs; the ZK-SNARK circuit vulnerability issue can be resolved by security committees and multi-provers, and in the future, AI verification may be used to address this. We need to reach the limits of protocols with cryptography while optimizing efficiency and enhancing security."

Vitalik pointed out that the current signature aggregation efficiency is about 30,000 signatures per slot, with high node requirements. The desired goal is to support as many validators as possible with low node requirements, making the protocol relatively simple.