2026 Ethereum ZK Scaling Year: From 30 TPS to Ten-Thousand-Level Throughput Technical Breakthrough

【Ethereum News】According to the latest predictions from multiple Ethereum developers and researchers, 2026 will become a critical turning point for Ethereum to achieve exponential performance breakthroughs through zero-knowledge proof technology. This upgrade is as significant as the 2022 Merge (transition from PoW to PoS), fundamentally changing the blockchain validation mechanism.

How thorough will the future changes be? Ethereum researcher Justin Drake envisions that validators will no longer need to re-execute each transaction to verify block validity but will instead directly verify zero-knowledge proofs. This may sound abstract, but the actual effect is straightforward—Layer 1 throughput will experience a qualitative leap. Currently, the Ethereum mainnet can handle about 30 transactions per second, with a goal to reach 10,000 TPS.

Hardware requirements will also decrease significantly. Drake demonstrated during the developer conference that verifying ZK proofs can be done on an old laptop, meaning the barrier to participating in network validation will be greatly lowered. More people will be able to run validation nodes, which could enhance network decentralization.

What is the specific timeline? By the end of 2026, approximately 10% of validators are expected to switch to ZK validation mode (industry term: Lean Execution Phase 1). Besu client engineer Gary Schulte added that the division of labor in this phase will be very clear: compute-intensive tasks will be handled by block proposers and ZK provers, while ordinary validators will only perform lightweight checks. This will improve efficiency and increase gas limits and network throughput.

Following the roadmap, 2027 will enter Phase 2, where all block producers will be required to generate ZK proofs, achieving full ZK execution. From the current Phase 0 (voluntary validation) to then, Ethereum will complete a fairly thorough paradigm shift in technology.

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LiquidityHuntervip
· 5h ago
Once again, we have to wait until 2026, and by then, we still don't know how the market will be... By the way, can this ZK really boost 30 TPS to 10,000? I find it hard to believe.
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All-InQueenvip
· 5h ago
Wait, by 2026, we can reach tens of thousands of TPS? Why do I always feel these predictions are overly optimistic... But ZK definitely has potential, just not sure when it will actually be implemented, maybe in the distant future.
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Hash_Banditvip
· 5h ago
ngl this zk rollup era hitting different... finally ditching that full tx re-execution nightmare. been waiting for this since the merge honestly
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