Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin declared that the competition to speed up zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs for Ethereum is "definitively won," shifting the primary focus for zkEVM development strictly to security. His comments, published on X on October 15, 2026, followed performance benchmarks from ZKsync showing its new Airbender Prime prover achieved real-time proving on a single graphics card.
ZKsync Prover Achieves Sub-10-Second Speed
Across 7,200 consecutive mainnet blocks, ZKsync reported that Airbender Prime delivered 99% of zero-knowledge proofs in less than 10 seconds. Because Ethereum processes a new block every 12 seconds, proving speed has historically been a major execution bottleneck for zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs).
According to ZKsync, public prover leaderboard ETHproofs now ranks Airbender Prime first in average proving time. The team argues that reducing hardware requirements down to a single graphics card allows independent operators and institutions to participate as provers, expanding hardware accessibility and network decentralization.
Vitalik Calls for Formal Security Verification
While celebrating the milestone, Vitalik Buterin emphasized that top priority must now move to formal verification—proving software correctness through mathematical proof rather than standard testing. Buterin named three essential standards for zkEVM execution: matching the exact Ethereum specification, placing strict limits on prover costs relative to block gas, and relying on a cryptographically sound proof system.
The technical milestone comes as Ethereum drops to $2,503, with native token ETH falling over 5% in the past 24 hours. Because Airbender Prime is a specialized prover tool rather than an Ethereum protocol change, it leaves ETH supply, staking rewards, and layer-1 base fees untouched.
Key Takeaways
- ZKsync's Airbender Prime generated 99% of proofs in under 10 seconds across 7,200 consecutive mainnet blocks on a single GPU.
- Vitalik Buterin stated on October 15, 2026, that the zkEVM speed race is won and urged developers to shift focus to formal security verification.
- Public prover leaderboard ETHproofs ranks Airbender Prime first in average proving speed.
- Native token ETH declined more than 5% over the last 24 hours amidst broader market movements.
Why It Matters
While rapid proving speeds demonstrate significant Layer 2 scaling progress, unverified execution code poses catastrophic risks for institutional adoption. Financial institutions exploring zero-knowledge technology require guarantees that compromised servers cannot push invalid state updates. Moving forward, formal mathematical verification rather than raw latency stats will separate production-grade zkEVMs from experimental prototypes.
