Alyssa Davidson
Posted: December 19, 2025 9:40 AM Updated: December 19, 2025 9:04 AM
Correction and fact check date: December 19, 2025, 9:40 AM
briefly
The Ethereum Foundation has reported zkEVM performance improvements over the past year and is currently prioritizing security and formal verification, setting a milestone to achieve 128-bit provable security by the end of 2026.
The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the long-term development of Ethereum through research, technology, and community initiatives, released an update on the progress of the zkEVM ecosystem, summarizing the year’s progress and outlining goals for the future.
According to the report, latency for real-time proofs has been dramatically reduced from 16 minutes to 16 seconds, costs have been reduced 45x, and zkVM now verifies 99% of Ethereum blocks in less than 10 seconds on the target hardware. Although these performance improvements address key bottlenecks, security remains a major concern.
Many STARK-based zkEVMs still rely on unproven mathematical assumptions, and recent research has challenged some of these assumptions, reducing their effective security margin. The Ethereum Foundation emphasizes that provable security remains essential, targeting 128-bit security as recommended by standardization bodies and validated by computational benchmarks. This is especially true when considering the potential for attackers to compromise large sums of money by exploiting soundness flaws in layer 1 zkEVM.
It is important to balance security and proof size. The higher the security, the larger the proof size usually is, so propagation across the Ethereum network must be manageable. To address this, the Foundation has set three key milestones:
The Ethereum Foundation highlights that by the end of February 2026, the zkEVM team is expected to integrate SoundCalc, a tool that continuously evaluates security based on current cryptographic bounds and proof parameters. By the end of May 2026, the ecosystem aims to achieve 100-bit provable security with a final proof size of less than 600 KiB and a concise description of the recursive architecture. By the end of 2026, the goal is 128-bit provable security, a proof size of less than 300 KiB, and formal security claims for a recursive architecture.
Recent cryptography and engineering developments, including compact polynomial promises, advanced recursive techniques, and structured circuit construction, have made this milestone feasible. Since modern zkEVMs involve complex team-specific recursive circuit designs that are essential to the security of the overall system, documenting the architecture and soundness of the recursion is especially important.
The Ethereum Foundation has focused on zkEVM security and formal verification ahead of the H-Star milestone.
There are strategic reasons to focus on zkEVM security at this stage. Securing a system that is still evolving is challenging, but once the zkVM architecture has stabilized and the team has reached its primary goals, formal verification efforts can be fully realized. By the H-star milestone, the proof system layer is expected to be largely settled, although not permanently fixed, but stable enough to enable formal verification of critical components, finalize security proofs, and align specifications with deployed code. This stability is essential to achieving secure layer 1 zkEVM.
A year ago, the main question was whether zkEVM could prove transactions fast enough, and now that problem has been solved. The current focus is on whether we can do so reliably and safely, and we have high confidence that we can do so. The Ethereum Foundation plans to publish a post formalizing these milestones in January, followed by a technical update detailing the proof system technology to meet the target security level and proof size. Ethproofs will also be updated to reflect the shift toward emphasizing security alongside performance. Support from the Foundation Cryptography team is provided throughout this process. With the performance sprint complete, attention now turns to strengthening the fundamentals.
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About the author
As MPost’s resident journalist, Alisa specializes in the broad areas of cryptocurrencies, zero-knowledge proofs, investing, and Web3. With a keen eye for new trends and technologies, she provides comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers about the ever-evolving digital financial landscape.
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As MPost’s resident journalist, Alisa specializes in the broad areas of cryptocurrencies, zero-knowledge proofs, investing, and Web3. With a keen eye for new trends and technologies, she provides comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers about the ever-evolving digital financial landscape.
more articles