Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin has urged developers to adopt what he thinks are clearer and more consistent performance metrics for zero-knowledge (ZK) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) systems.
Speaking on X, Vitalik said developers should measure “overhead as a ratio” instead of stating raw operations per second. He argued this approach would help quantify how much computational efficiency is lost when switching from traditional trust-based systems to cryptographic ones.
Vitalik explained that using ratios instead of raw figures provides a clearer, hardware-independent understanding of cryptographic costs. “It gives a very informative number: how much efficiency am I sacrificing by making my app cryptographic instead of trust-dependent?” he said. Moreover, he added that developers can easily estimate performance since they already know how long their raw computations take.
Vitalik’s perspective on FHE and ZK
In response to X user Lukas Helminger’s question about benchmarking FHE overhead, Vitalik clarified, “FHE doesn’t require a network, it’s a single-party thing.” He further explained that only the input and final decryption phases involve external communication, which has little impact on workload size.
Among Ethereum’s scaling approaches, ZK remains the most complex and critical. Besides, the Ethereum Foundation continues to prioritize ZK technology, describing it as a cornerstone for future scalability. Recently, the foundation released the Kohaku roadmap, a privacy wallet plan heavily dependent on ZK-EVM and ZK-VM frameworks.
Ethereum’s broader scaling challenges
Right now, Ethereum works in a way where every computer on the network checks every single block. But if the gas limit, which controls how much data fits in a block, goes up, those computers could get overwhelmed. Since each block appears about every 12 seconds, validators only have around 4 to 8 seconds to finish checking. Bigger blocks would make that harder, putting more pressure on the network and possibly affecting its stability.
Meanwhile, Ethereum developer Dankrad Feist has moved to Tempo, a new Layer 1 blockchain project supported by Stripe and Paradigm. Feist, who helped design Ethereum’s Danksharding system, has been deeply involved in finding ways to make the network handle more transactions efficiently.
Vitalik’s comment highlights the need for clearer ways to measure efficiency in crypto systems. Better clarity can help developers understand performance trade-offs and design more balanced Ethereum tools.
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