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The 2025 Shanghai Blockchain International Week and the 11th Blockchain Global Summit were held in Shanghai.Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, delivered a speech via video connection, sharing his views, new developments in Ethereum, and future applications.Vitalik said,Blockchain and cryptography technology have made tremendous progress in the past decade, and the next five to ten years will usher in a “truly usable, scalable and low-cost” stage.
Vitalik pointed out,New cryptography technologies such as ZK zero-knowledge proof and FHE fully homomorphic encryption are maturing rapidly, its computing efficiency has been significantly improved and the developer experience has been greatly improved.He revealed that the current Ethereum mainnet can generate ZK proofs of L1 blocks in real time through about 50 GPUs, which was considered “at least five to ten years away” two years ago.future,ZK will not only be used for expansion and privacy, but also to increase decentralization, because verifying blocks will become “just one millisecond.”
Vitalik encourages developers to actively participate in the entrepreneurship, underlying R&D and application practice of ZK and FHE technologies, such as participating in Scroll, Taiko, Lighter, Intmax, Aztec and other ecosystems, as well as new scenarios such as ZK voting and privacy identity.He said that the development of blockchain is just like the popularization process of encryption technology back then – from expensive and complex to ubiquitous and almost cost-free.When ZK and FHE reach the same level of popularity, the real blockchain revolution will begin..
Bitcoin Vision compiled Vitalik Buterin’s speech as follows:.
Vitalik: Hello everyone, welcome to this event. In the past 10 years, the blockchain and encryption industry have developed a lot. Blockchain technology was very early in the beginning, but now the value proposition has made great progress compared to 10 years ago.
The topic I’m going to give today is to think about blockchain and cryptography.Blockchain and ZK zero-knowledge proof, FHE (fully homomorphic encryption), and all other technologies are scalable, secondly developer-friendly, and thirdly, cheap.If these technologies didn’t have a lot of drawbacks, what could we do with these things?
In fact, encryption technology has many parts, such asAmong the parts that the world already has, the first is signature and the second is encryption.Encryption is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS.Everyone should remember that the technology of https did not exist 20 years ago.But in 20 years, all websites, all apps, and all applications will be based on encryption.The first part of https is encryption, and the second part is signature. Why didn’t we have this situation 20 years ago?Why now?That’s because the cost of signing and encryption is now almost zero.
In fact, it is not that signature and encryption technologies did not exist 20 years ago. There were some important papers before 1976 and 1978, followed by RSA, which can be said to be the first modern signature and encryption algorithm.There was the DES algorithm around 1980, and the BGW algorithm began to exist in 1989.It was PGP in about 1992. In 2015, this technology has become abundant and available everywhere. It has become so cheap and simple that there is no need to think about the shortcomings of this technology.
In the past ten years, I have started to get involved in some new encryption technologies in the field of cryptography. One is ZK (zero-knowledge proof) and the other is FHE (fully homomorphic encryption). Its computing efficiency has been significantly improved and the developer experience has been greatly improved.
On L2, the gas limit of the Ethereum main network has been increased from 30 million to 45 million this year, but we have plans to continue to increase it, possibly by 10 times or 100 times. You think this technology cost is very low and the developer UX becomes very good.Blockchain is now making roughly the same progress.What’s the result?If you are thinking about ZK technology now, you may have this question: Why is ZK needed?Can we avoid ZK?In many cases, blockchain is the same. Why is blockchain needed? Can blockchain be avoided?
Five years later, I guess many people’s attitude towards ZK is no longer asking why ZK should be used, but asking why ZK is not added.Ethereum has a great impact in the short term. Now we have a plan. You can see a lot of ZK EVMs on the Ethereum mainnet. They are now proving Ethereum L1 in real time. This was completely impossible two years ago. Two years ago, everyone thought it might take five or ten years to do it.But now it can (be done), now about 50 GPUs, can prove almost all Ethereum blocks in real time, not 30 million, but 45 million.So we can achieve a more scalable and decentralized network while expanding in the long term.Why?Because we don’t need every node to connect all transactions in the blockchain, we can also use most nodes to use ZK proof. Verification can take one millisecond, which is very fast.
Another advantage of ZK is privacy, so we can have a project slogan this year. We have to think about all Ethereum privacy aspects, including on-chain transaction privacy, off-chain (transaction) privacy, including various applications, all of which can be done now.Two years ago you could do a little, but now you can do more than before.There is another important issue, the relationship between cryptography, blockchain and hardware. We have a saying in the blockchain field, “It’s not your private key, it’s not your currency.” If you don’t control the private key of your wallet, your private key is controlled by others. If it is controlled by others, you can’t verify whether your currency is safe.Everything done in the blockchain relies on cryptography, and cryptography relies on private keys. Algorithms need to be run in hardware and stored in hardware. If you can’t trust your hardware, you can’t trust everything that happens on the hardware.
In fact, many fields have this problem. Blockchain has digital assets and digital identities, but IT also has this problem. If all devices have a computer inside, how can you trust it?Medical care also has this problem, and privacy in the medical field is also very important.
We have recently started an interesting project. If you play DeFi Coin (sound) or Singapore’s DXR (sound), you may see a relatively small device that can show you the quality of the air, carbon dioxide, and many, many different indicators.Having this kind of equipment allows us to know more about what is happening in the air, so medical treatment is very important.But there are also very important privacy issues. Ten or twenty years from now, the information known in the physical world may be 1,000 times or more than now.How can privacy be protected?How can we protect safety?So what we are making now is the future version of the device. We need to add cryptography technology so that we can know what we want to know in the data at the same time without exposing the privacy of everyone and everywhere.ZK is very useful.
First, we know that cryptography is very important, but now we find that cryptography can really be used.Second, open source and verified hardware are also important. In fact, the blockchain field has the same problems as many other fields.There are a lot of developments in all the areas I just talked about, how can you participate?
I think there are three answers:
First, start a business. Now you can make or support some ZKID applications using ZK, FHE, and blockchain.
Second, the underlying cryptography technology is developed and optimized. The Ethereum Foundation has a Lean team, and there are many opportunities for cooperation. You can contact the Lean team.
Third, you can use current technology-based applications, such as Scroll, Taiko, Lighter, Intmax, Aztec, etc., as well as some ZK voting applications, such as zkpassport, which has been around for about two years, and aragon announced earlier this year that it will use ZK voting, as well as some wallets.There are already many ways to participate in these fields.
I think the issue that should be considered five or ten years from now is that many technologies such as HTTPS now use simple cryptography such as signatures and encryption, but you don’t know that they have these technologies. These technologies are particularly convenient and can be used directly without thinking about costs or user issues.If ZK blockchains such as L1, L2, and FHE can also reach this level of efficiency, then everything will be solved.If it can be achieved, what can be done with this technology?The answer is to start experimenting now. Every year we can make more and more applications, and we will probably know a little more every year. I am very happy to participate in the technology research and development process with you, and hope to participate again with you.
