Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Consensys, mentioned the community might develop into a completely zero-knowledge (ZK) proof-based protocol inside three to 5 years. The assertion was made throughout an interview printed on June 10, 2026 by The Block, during which 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 manager famous that the incorporation of applied sciences such because the Lean Ethereum venture, a proposal to simplify and scale the principle community, and the enlargement of cryptographic verification methods they may progressively remodel the community structure.
“Ethereum might develop 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 in addition enhance the interplay with second layer networks (L2).
It’s value noting that the proposal arrives in a second of inside evaluation for Ethereum. Over the previous few months, a number of of its high leaders have reevaluated the so-called rollup-centric roadmap, initially designed to resolve scalability points by way of an ecosystem of semi-interconnected chains that settle their transactions on the mainnet.
Among the many crucial 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 develop into, at greatest, “branded shards,” as CriptoNoticias reported. From that evaluation, the Ethereum Basis as soon as once more prioritized direct enhancements to the bottom layer to make it sooner, 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 may later be moved to Ethereum. For example, he highlighted the advances in real-time ZK assessments that initiatives corresponding to Linea and Gnosis are already creating.
The supervisor defined that these applied sciences might enable the execution of transactions synchronously between totally different networks suitable with Ethereum. In that situation, Customers might transfer belongings between ecosystems with out utilizing bridgesone of many important sources of danger and friction throughout the sector. Moreover, liquidity at the moment dispersed throughout a number of networks may very well 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 totally different options to discover totally different technological approaches earlier than converging on extra environment friendly requirements.
For now, the dialogue displays one of many important challenges dealing with Ethereum in the present day: growing its capability with out sacrificing decentralization or safety. Initiatives like Lean Ethereum intention to exceed 10,000 transactions per second on the mainnet, whereas ZK take a look at improvement seeks to concurrently resolve scalability, interoperability, and privateness points.
If this technique involves fruition over the following few years, Ethereum might transfer in the direction of a mannequin during which the separation between the bottom layer and second layer networks is virtually invisible to customers. Greater than a technical enchancment, the target can 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 large transaction processing.
