Ronin is coming back as an Ethereum L2 – and this is only the start of a massive L1 → L2 migration! 🫨 I’d love to see the faces of all the non-believers in my DMs right now. Ethereum will be home to all 🗿

Amazing to see so many major L2s now at stage 1. The next goal we should shoot for is, in my view, fast (<1h) withdrawal times, enabled by validity (aka ZK) proof systems. I consider this even more important than stage 2. Fast withdrawal times are important because waiting a week to withdraw is simply far too long for people, and even for intent-based bridging (eg. ERC-7683), the cost of capital becomes too high if the liquidity provider has to wait a week. This creates large incentives to instead use solutions with unacceptable trust assumptions (eg. multisigs/MPC) that undermine the whole point of having L2s instead of fully independent L1s. If we can reduce native withdrawal times to under 1h short term, and 12s medium term, then we can further cement the Ethereum L1 as the default place to issue assets, and the economic center of the Ethereum ecosystem. To do this, we need to move away from optimistic proof systems, which inherently require waiting multiple days to withdraw. Historically, ZK proof tech has been immature and expensive, which made optimistic proofs the smart and safe choice. But recently, this is changing rapidly. is an excellent place to track the progress of ZK-EVM proofs, which have been improving rapidly. Formal verification on ZK proofs is also advancing. Earlier this year, I proposed a 2-of-3 ZK + OP + TEE proof system strategy that threads the needle between security, speed and maturity: * 2 of 3 systems (ZK, OP) are trustless, so no single actor (incl TEE manufacturer or side channel attacker) can break the proof system by violating a trust assumption * 2 of 3 systems (ZK, TEE) are instant, so you get fast withdrawals in the normal case * 2 of 3 systems (TEE, OP) have been in production in various contexts for years This is one approach; perhaps people will opt to instead do ZK + ZK + OP tiebreak, or ZK + ZK + security council tiebreak. I have no strong opinions here, I care about the underlying goal, which is to be fast (in the normal case) and secure. With such proof systems, the only remaining bottleneck to fast settlement becomes the gas cost of submitting proofs onchain. This is why short term I say once per hour: if you try to submit a 500k+ gas ZK proof (or a 5m gas STARK) much more often, it adds a high additional cost. In the longer term, we can solve this with aggregation: N proofs from N rollups (plus txs from privacy-protocol users) can be replaced by a single proof that proves the validity of the N proofs. This becomes economical to submit once per slot, enabling the endgame: near-instant native cross-L2 asset movement through the L1. Let's work together to make this happen.

Kinto successfully retains Stage 1.

Glad to report that all 6 rollups affected by the recent Stage 1 requirements changes have performed the necessary upgrades and are now fully compliant. That includes: - @base - @Optimism - @unichain - @Scroll_ZKP - @inkonchain - @KintoXYZ Now onwards to Stage 2! 🫡

📢Governance Review #63 is out! New month, fresh proposals. Activity dipped a bit, but the governance boat’s still afloat. Highlights from: 🔴Optimism 🔵Arbitrum 🟣Polygon 🌀ZKsync 📜Scroll 👇Read the full review at the link below🧵 (1/8)

It's almost time for Hybrid ZK Innovation discussion. July 31. 3pm UTC. Live on X.

Public goods 🤝 Ethereum Drop by during the 10th anniversary Spaces by @ssv_network if you have time to hear me ramble about Ethereum and the future of L2s 🫨

In early 2017, I spent a week in a dirty hostel in Berlin with @ameensol and a couple Raiden of colleagues discussing state channel designs. While not directly L2, some of the work we did back then paved the way for the L2s of today.

When we started, there were no “rollups,” no “altVMs,” no “app-specific.” Just the idea that complex computation should run securely on Ethereum, and anyone could challenge results without being Sybil-attacked. The words came later, but the mission was already there.

Happy 10th Birthday Ethereum! Wishing you a future full of Stage 2, Based and Native rollups!