Headline: Ethereum L1 ditches Poseidon after eight‑year push — pivots to SHA/BLAKE as post‑quantum plan accelerates Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake announced on Aug. 13 that Ethereum’s layer‑1 roadmap will move away from the Poseidon hash family — the specialized hash developed for SNARKs — and instead adopt well‑studied, traditional hashes such as SHA‑2 or BLAKE2s. “Goodbye, Poseidon!” Drake wrote, calling the choice the conclusion of an “8‑year, 8‑figure rabbit hole” in post‑quantum cryptography. Why this matters - Poseidon, created in 2019, was engineered to be cheap inside zero‑knowledge proof systems (SNARKs) and became popular across zk‑rollups and zkVMs that now secure billions in crypto assets. - The Ethereum Foundation’s decision affects future L1 architecture — it is not an immediate mandate for rollups, VMs, or apps that already use Poseidon. Those projects are not required to swap hashes right away. What changed Drake says recent advances in proof‑system design flipped the original trade‑off that favored bespoke hashes. Rather than making new “SNARK‑friendly” hashes, researchers have built “hash‑friendly SNARKs.” Specifically, SNARKs operating over binary fields (working effectively with bits) can now process conventional, Boolean‑style hash functions much more efficiently than earlier prime‑field SNARKs. Performance highlights Drake shared: - Binary‑field SNARKs can prove roughly 1 million conventional hash calls per second on a laptop, with an overhead of about 100x versus native CPU execution. - AI‑assisted research via SNARK.fast produced a best result of 1.8 million BLAKE3 compressions/sec — a 255% improvement from its baseline. - Projects Binius (binary‑field arithmetic for ZK) and Flock (batching proofs for Boolean computations like SHA‑256, Keccak, BLAKE3) were key contributors. Benefits and trade‑offs - Using mature hashes (SHA, BLAKE) reduces reliance on niche cryptographic primitives that require lengthy, separate scrutiny. SHA and BLAKE families already have extensive real‑world analysis. - That said, integrating these hashes into Ethereum still needs research, audits and implementation testing — it’s a change to design approach, not a plug‑and‑play swap. Post‑quantum context The move ties into Ethereum’s broader post‑quantum strategy. With quantum‑capable machines a future threat to elliptic‑curve signatures used in accounts and parts of consensus, Ethereum is preparing both protocol and cryptographic defenses: - Drake flagged recent AI‑assisted cryptanalysis setbacks for complex post‑quantum schemes (e.g., HAWK, SQIsign), bolstering the case for simpler, well‑studied hash‑based signatures. - Hash‑based signature schemes tend to produce large signatures; Ethereum plans to use SNARK aggregation to compress many post‑quantum signatures into a single compact proof for on‑chain verification, or to verify multisig/threshold rules without placing all signatures onchain. Wallet and standards progress - Early wallet‑level tests have been performed: a SPHINCS‑based verifier demo required ~127,000 gas and a 3,704‑byte signature, with verification cost estimated at roughly $0.07 per account in June. - The timing aligns with broader standards work: NIST finalized its first post‑quantum standards in Aug 2024, urging organizations to start migration planning. - Independent advisory work (including contributors such as Drake and Dan Boneh) has warned current blockchains are still safe today but that migration will be lengthy and potentially costly in data increase without aggregation strategies. Roadmap and timeline - The Ethereum Foundation’s post‑quantum team is building binary‑field infrastructure as part of leanVM, a minimal ZK virtual machine intended to verify and aggregate cryptographic proofs. - Drake’s current schedule targets a production‑grade leanVM in 2027, with deployments touching consensus, data, and execution layers planned for 2028. These dates sit within Ethereum’s broader Strawmap coordination through 2029 and will require testing and consensus across independent client and protocol teams. - Near‑term work focuses on benchmarking and collaboration with projects like Binius and Flock to mature the underlying proof technology. Bottom line Ethereum is shifting strategy: instead of tailoring hashes to fit SNARKs, it’s evolving SNARKs to fit established hashes — a move that simplifies cryptographic assumptions, leans on decades of study, and dovetails with an increasingly urgent push toward post‑quantum readiness. The change marks a major design pivot for L1 architecture but leaves existing Poseidon deployments undisturbed for now while researchers complete audits and integrations. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news