The Ethereum Foundation has announced a step-by-step plan to enable Ethereum’s main chain to verify blocks using zkEVM proofs, reducing the need for validators to re-run all calculations themselves. The proposal, shared by Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Tomasz K. Stańczak via
zkEVM in L1 – Planning https://t.co/KLz7PoH6q9
— Tomasz K. Stańczak (@tkstanczak) January 15, 2026
Ethereum L1 moves towards zk proof-based verification.
Already in July last year, the Ethereum Foundation announced its “zk-first” approach. Today, validators on Ethereum typically verify blocks by re-running transactions and comparing the results. This plan proposes an alternative. Validators can verify cryptographic evidence that block execution is correct.
This document summarizes the intended pipeline in general terms. The execution client creates a small “witness” package for the block, the standardized zkEVM program uses that package to generate a proof of correct execution, and the consensus client verifies that proof during block verification.
The first milestone is to create an “ExecutionWitness”, a block-specific data structure that contains the information needed to verify execution without re-executing it. The plan calls for a formal witness format for Ethereum’s implementation specifications, conformance testing, and standardized RPC endpoints. The current debug_executionWitness endpoint is already “in production use in Kona on Optimism,” he notes, suggesting that a more zk-friendly endpoint may be needed.
A key dependency is adding better tracking of what parts of state a block touches via the block-level access list (BAL). According to the documentation, as of November 2025, this work has not been treated as urgent enough to be backported to the previous fork.
The next milestone is “zkEVM Guest Program”. This is explained by stateless verification logic, which checks whether a block produces a valid state transition when combined with a witness. The plan emphasizes reproducible builds and compilation to standardized goals so assumptions are clear and testable.
In addition to Ethereum-specific code, the plan aims to standardize the interface between zkVM and guest programs, including common targets, common ways to access precompilation and I/O, and agreed-upon assumptions about how programs should be loaded and executed.
On the consensus side, the roadmap calls for changes to allow consensus clients to accept zk proofs as part of beacon block verification, along with specifications, test vectors, and internal rollout plans. The paper also highlights the importance of executable payload availability, including the “put-a-block-in-a-blob” approach.
The proposal treats proof generation as an operational problem as much as a protocol problem. It includes milestones for integrating zkVM into EF tools such as Ethproofs and Ere, testing GPU settings (including “zkboost”), and tracking stability and bottlenecks.
Benchmarking consists of ongoing work with explicit goals such as measuring witness generation time, proof generation and verification times, and the network impact of proof propagation. These measurements may be factored into proposed future gas price adjustments for zk-heavy workloads.
Security is also marked as persistent through planning for formal specifications, monitoring, supply chain controls such as reproducible builds and artifact signatures, and documented trust and threat models. This paper proposes a “go/no-go framework” for determining when a proof system is mature enough for wider use.
One external dependency stands out. ePBS, which the document explains is necessary to give attestors more time. Without it, the plan states that provers will have “one to two seconds” to generate a proof. “6 to 9 seconds.” The document is framed with two sentences that capture the urgency: “This is not a project we are working on, but it is an optimization we need.” ePBS is expected to be deployed in Glamsterdam by mid-2026.
If these milestones are achieved, Ethereum will move towards proof-based verification as a viable option for L1, while the timing and operational complexity of proofs will remain gating factors.
At press time, ETH was trading at $3,300.
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