L1 · 2146

Arbitrum promotes ZK settlement, and L1 withdrawals are expected to be shortened from days to hours

Comparing news, the Arbitrum development team said that zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs are being introduced into the Arbitrum platform to achieve a multi-proof settlement model. Through ZK certification, the settlement time for the Arbitrum block to Ethereum L1 is expected to be shortened from a few days to a few hours. While improving the capital efficiency of users, cross-chain bridges, and protocols, security is maintained through multiple proof mechanisms. The relevant capabilities target Arbitrum One and dedicated chains based on the Arbitrum platform, and Offchain will submit an upgrade proposal to the DAO in the future. Current developments include: it is possible to run the same state transition function as optimistically in SP1 zKVM to generate ZK proofs for real mainnet blocks; Stylus' WASM contract can be proven along with Solidity contracts; the team launched an independent Rust validator to make ZK certification a first-class model in parallel with standard verification; the BoLD settlement protocol already supports acceptance of ZK proofs and endorsements by the Quick Confirmation Committee. The original controversial game is still a fallback path, forming ZK proofs, proof committees and fraud Multi-proof architecture to prove collaboration. The team says it's continuing pressure drop to prove the cost and gradually incorporate the relevant code into Nitro's main production path. The next focus includes further optimizing certification and moving to Ret-based execution, completing L1 message inbox attestation, and connecting ZK settlement capabilities to node configurations so that each chain can be enabled as needed.

1d ago

Gnosis Chain's GIP-153 proposal to transform into Ethereum L2 has been approved

Comparatively, Gnosis Chain's GIP-153 proposal to transition from a sovereign independent L1 to a highly aligned Ethereum L2 has officially been approved. On the eve of the voting deadline, several official related addresses, including Gnosis co-founder StefandGeorge, voted in favor and successfully met the quorum (Quorum) requirement. The proposal was jointly initiated by Gnosis founder tw_tter and core members. It aims to free Gnosis Chain from the shortcomings of traditional PoS L1 security and inflation subsidies, directly inherit the security of Ethereum validators, and will be the first to achieve simultaneous composable Ethereum L2.

3d ago

Aligned announces Genesis airdrop details, accounting for 8.74% of total supply

In comparison, ZK Verification Layer Project Aligned announced Genesis Drop details. The airdrop allocated 8.74% of the total fixed supply of ALIGN of 10 billion units to the community supporting crypto, Ethereum, and ZK. TGE will unlock 44.36% of the total airdrop volume, accounting for about 3.88% of the total supply. The airdrop is divided into three parts. Airdrop 1 is distributed to the community and accounts for about 6.54% of the supply: those who receive 10,000 or less are fully unlocked at TGE; those with more than 10,000 are unlocked in full at TGE; TGE first unlocks 10,000 units, and the rest is released linearly over 12 months. Airdrop 2 was an outstanding contributor, accounting for 2.10%, covering Protocol Guild, L2BEAT, ZachXBT, and ZK Podcast. TGE unlocked only 2.08% of them, and the rest were linear for 47 months. ZK Arcade accounts for 0.10% and is fully unlocked at TGE. In terms of receipt rules, those allotted 10,000 ALIGN and below will receive them on the Base Chain, and those with more than 10,000 will receive them on Ethereum L1. Users can check eligibility and quota at community.alignedlayer.com.

3d ago

Offchain Labs Releases ZK Technology Advances: Proof Generation Accelerated by 4000 Times, Arbitrum Will Integrate Multi-Prover Architectures

In comparison, the Offchain Labs research team announced the progress of zero-knowledge proof technology research, covering areas such as proving acceleration, verifiable AI, and recursive security. Among them, the vector commitment scheme reduced proof generation time for 64,000 pieces of data from about 2 minutes to 32 ms, about 4,000 times faster; the new proof system, Zaratan, achieved a completely simple, native integer proof for the first time, which can reduce computational overhead such as RSA by about 5,000 times; in terms of verifiable AI, the lightweight verification protocol can reduce inference verification of large models from minutes to milliseconds. Arbitrum is exploring a multi-prover architecture that combines ZK proof with fraud proof and TEE to eliminate single points of failure and shorten the L1 settlement cycle.

4d ago

After eight years of investment, why did Ethereum abandon Poseidon?

Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News Original title: After eight years of sharp turns, why did Ethereum suddenly abandon Poseidon? On August 13, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake wrote on X that the Ethereum Fund decided to abandon the SNARK-friendly hash algorithm Poseidon at the L1 layer and instead use traditional hash functions such as SHA2 or BLAKE2. Behind this decision is eight years of research, the accumulation of tens of millions of dollars, and a major revision to the post-quantum cryptography roadmap. Since its launch in 2019, Poseidon has been regarded as an ideal hashing scheme for applications such as zkRollup and zKVM. Its structure makes it cheaper and more efficient than traditional binary-based hash functions in SNARK circuits. But when post-quantum security became a hard requirement for Ethereum, Poseidon's limitations began to be exposed. Justin Drake said that this shift is due to groundbreaking SNARK design progress, that is, the performance of traditional hash functions in SNARK circuits is comparable to that of Poseidon, which was previously designed specifically for SNARK optimization. A single laptop can verify about 1 million traditional hash calls per second. According to the article, Poseidon has been the mainstream SNARK-friendly hashing scheme since its launch in 2019, providing security guarantees for applications such as zkRollup and zKVM. Justin Drake said that the plan shows that production-grade LeanVM is expected to be launched in 2027, the relevant deployment of the consensus layer, data layer and execution layer is expected to be completed in 2028, and the quantum team is also accelerating research related to the binary domain after the Ethereum Foundation. Why now? Traditional hashes have been difficult to enter SNARK for a long time, and the main obstacle comes from differences in computational languages. SHA2, BLAKE2s, and Keccak make extensive use of Boolean operations such as XOR and shift. Traditional SNARK usually processes arithmetic on large prime numbers, and simulating every bit operation can incur high constraint costs. Poseidon is designed directly around prime field arithmetic, with fewer constraints in exchange for higher proof speed. The cost is that the algorithm has a short history and requires continuous cryptographic analysis. The binary domain switches the underlying math to the smallest element domain containing only 0 and 1, and uses the binary domain extension to carry larger data. As a result, bit computation can directly enter the proof system. SNARK began to adapt to traditional hashes, and the technical focus changed from designing SNARK-friendly hashes to designing hash-friendly SNARKs. Binius, proposed by Jim Posen and Benjamin Diamond in 2023, shows the binary tower domain SNARK path. The Flock paper by Benedikt Bünz, Ron Rothblum, and William Wang was uploaded to arXiv on July 29, 2026. Its M4 Max benchmark is that a single core proves 82,000 times of BLAKE3 compression and 42,000 SHA- cycles per second With 256 compression and 30,000 Keccak replacements, the 10-core BLAKE3 has a throughput of over 660,000 times. According to Drake, the laptop can prove about 1 million traditional hash calls per second, which is about 100 times the cost of native CPU Boolean calculations; SNARK.fast reached 1.8 million BLAKE3 per second on M3 Max a few days ago. LeanVM in 2027, the 2028 three-tier deployment Another key reason for the abandonment of Poseidon is that the post-quantum security timeline is accelerating. “The Quantum Threat to Blockchains - 2026 Report” published by Project Eleven points out that the rapid development of quantum computers poses a serious threat to blockchain security. Once a “cryptographics-related quantum computer” (CRQC) appears, the Shor algorithm can quickly crack asymmetric cryptography such as ECDSA (used by Bitcoin and most public chains) and RSA. It is expected that Q-Day (quantum decryption day) may be between 2030 and 203...

4d agoForesight News#L1 #Ethereum

Ethlabs Releases Hegotá Upgrade Priority Suggestions: Strengthening Censorship Resistance, Accelerating Block Generation, and Native Account Abstraction

Comparing news, Ethlabs, a non-profit Ethereum R&D lab, published an article outlining its priority recommendations for Ethereum's next network upgrade, Hegotá. Ethlabs prioritizes the following directions as the highest priority: strengthening censorship resistance (EIP-7805 FOCIL has been confirmed as the number one proposal); making Ethereum faster (adding EIP-8198 Quick Slots is recommended to reduce slot time to improve confirmation speed and finality); native account abstraction (recommends EIP-8141 Frame Transactions, which supports Passkey wallets, ERC20 gas payments, batch transactions and privacy, etc.); and continuing L1 Scaling up (EIP-8131 and EIP-8279 are recommended to improve capacity and predictability).

5d ago

VanEck Head of Research: Passing the CLARITY Act will trigger a huge L1 rebound

Comparing news, Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, said that if the US CLARITY Act is passed, it will trigger a “huge mitigating rally” (an enormous relief rally) in L1 tokens. Sigel's statement focuses on the potential impact of regulatory progress on public chain native assets. The CLARITY Act aims to provide a clearer regulatory framework for digital assets, and the market generally sees it as one of the key legislative variables influencing risk appetite for crypto assets.

6d ago

Balaji: Privacy is a new era of encryption, 2025 to 2030 is the privacy phase

Comparing news, ChianCatcher's former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan said during an interview on Cypherpunk's blog program that encryption is not only a commercial level, but also an ideological level. The banking and political system has failed and requires withdrawal and self-sovereignty, and the missing part is privacy. He pointed out that Bitcoin's two major innovations are the programmability that Ethereum represents and the privacy that Zcash represents. Bitcoin was proven viable from 2009 to 2017, programmability from 2017 to 2025, and now around 2025 is the privacy phase. Privacy means everything is already encrypted with ZK, including ZKYC, ZK DEX, and ZK smart contracts to achieve the minimum necessary information. This may require a revision of the base layer, a new L1, or a brand new company, and ZK can technically attract high-IQ talent just like AI.

8d ago

Ethereum L1 abandons Poseidon's hashing algorithm and shifts to the quantum cryptography route after SHA2 or BLAKE2

In comparison, Justin Drake, a core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, announced in an article on the X platform that Ethereum L1 will no longer use Poseidon, the SNARK-friendly hash function that has dominated since 2019, and switch to traditional hash functions such as SHA2 or BLAKE2s. The adjustments are based on developments in the SNARK design field, and the focus is shifting from “SNARK-friendly hashing” to “hash-friendly SNARK.” By natively aligning boolean operations in traditional hashes in the binary domain, the proven performance of traditional hashes in SNARK has reached 1 million times per second, and the cost is about 100 times higher. Research such as Binius and Flock has fueled related developments. The Ethereum Foundation's post-quantum team is advancing this route, and the roadmap includes deploying production-grade LeanVM in 2027 and deployment at the consensus layer, execution layer, and data processing layer in 2028. Justin Drake also said that the enhanced ability of AI in cryptographic analysis has caused HAWK and the homologous solution SQISign to be hit one after another recently, and the hash-based scheme is being used for post-blockchain quantum signatures. The trend of open source automated research is also accelerating, and SNARK.fast has achieved 1.8 million BLAKE3 proofs per second.

8d ago

ZeroDev founder Derek Chiang joins Ethlabs to push Ethereum technology into actual products and business scenarios

Comparing news, Derek Chiang, founder of ZeroDev and a former Offchain employee, announced that he will join Ethlabs, saying that it will focus on promoting Ethereum technologies such as real-time proof, lightweight clients, and rapid confirmation into actual products and business scenarios. He said that the current adoption of many of Ethereum's underlying technologies is still clearly lagging behind potential. For example, some cross-chain bridges still rely on multi-signature verification of L1 deposits; he hopes Ethlabs will become a market implementation force for Ethereum technology and persuade developers to adopt it through technical and product advantages rather than ideas.

9d ago