Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Consensys, mentioned the community may turn into a totally zero-knowledge (ZK) proof-based protocol inside three to 5 years. The assertion was made throughout an interview revealed on June 10, 2026 by The Block, wherein he defended the evolution of Ethereum’s scalability roadmap.
In response to Lubin, advances in ZK testing and mainnet enhancements are strengthening the rollup-centric mannequin that Ethereum has adopted over the previous few years. The chief famous that the incorporation of applied sciences such because the Lean Ethereum mission, a proposal to simplify and scale the principle community, and the growth of cryptographic verification programs they might progressively remodel the community structure.
“Ethereum may turn into a protocol fully primarily based on zero-knowledge proofs,” mentioned Lubin, who believes that this transition wouldn’t solely strengthen the safety and effectivity of the bottom layer (L1), but additionally enhance the interplay with second layer networks (L2).
It’s price noting that the proposal arrives in a second of inside assessment for Ethereum. Over the previous few months, a number of of its prime leaders have reevaluated the so-called rollup-centric roadmap, initially designed to resolve scalability points via an ecosystem of semi-interconnected chains that settle their transactions on the mainnet.
Among the many vital voices is Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, who famous earlier this yr that the unique imaginative and prescient had not totally materialized. and that many second-layer options had turn into, at greatest, “branded shards,” as CriptoNoticias reported. From that assessment, the Ethereum Basis as soon as once more prioritized direct enhancements to the bottom layer to make it quicker, cheaper, and extra aggressive in comparison with different networks.
Regardless of these criticisms, Lubin maintains that L2s proceed to be a basic piece of the ecosystem. In his opinion, these networks have served as experimentation environments for complicated applied sciences which might later be moved to Ethereum. For instance, he highlighted the advances in real-time ZK exams that tasks corresponding to Linea and Gnosis are already creating.
The supervisor defined that these applied sciences may enable the execution of transactions synchronously between completely different networks suitable with Ethereum. In that situation, Customers may transfer belongings between ecosystems with out utilizing bridgesone of many fundamental sources of threat and friction inside the sector. Moreover, liquidity presently dispersed throughout a number of networks could possibly be built-in right into a extra unified setting.
We at all times knew that zero-knowledge proofs had been going to be vital in our ecosystem. We thought that they’d first have relevance in second layer networks. And we had been proper.
Joseph Lubin.
Lubin additionally linked this evolution to the imaginative and prescient of Ethereum as an infrastructure able to supporting virtually limitless demand. As he defined, the preliminary fragmentation generated by the rollups was a deliberate choice to permit completely different options to discover completely different technological approaches earlier than converging on extra environment friendly requirements.
For now, the dialogue displays one of many fundamental challenges going through Ethereum as we speak: growing its capability with out sacrificing decentralization or safety. Initiatives like Lean Ethereum purpose to exceed 10,000 transactions per second on the mainnet, whereas ZK take a look at growth seeks to concurrently clear up scalability, interoperability, and privateness points.
If this technique involves fruition over the following few years, Ethereum may transfer in the direction of a mannequin wherein the separation between the bottom layer and second layer networks is virtually invisible to customers. Greater than a technical enchancment, the target could be cut back the fragmentation that has accompanied the expansion of the ecosystem and provide a unified expertise in an setting more and more oriented in the direction of institutional adoption and big transaction processing.
