Dmitry Khovratovich

Today marks an inflection in the Ethereum Foundation's long-term quantum strategy. We've formed a new Post Quantum (PQ) team, led by the brilliant Thomas Coratger (@tcoratger). Joining him is Emile, one of the world-class talents behind leanVM. leanVM is the cryptographic cornerstone of our entire post-quantum strategy. After years of quiet R&D, EF management has officially declared PQ security a top strategic priority. Our journey began in 2019, with the "Eth3.0 Quantum Security" presentation at StarkWare Sessions. Since 2024, PQ has been central to the @leanEthereum vision. The pace of PQ engineering breakthroughs since then has been nothing short of phenomenal. It's now 2026, timelines are accelerating. Time to go full PQ: → PQ ACD: Antonio Sanso (@asanso) kicks off a bi-weekly All Core Devs PQ transactions breakout call next month. These sessions focus on user-facing security, covering dedicated precompiles, account abstraction, and longer-term transaction signature aggregation with leanVM. → PQ foundations: Today we are announcing a $1M Poseidon Prize to harden the Poseidon hash function. We are betting big on hash-based cryptography to enjoy the strongest and leanest cryptographic foundations. Check out our other $1M PQ initiative, the Proximity Prize. → PQ devnets: Multi-client PQ consensus devnets are live! Shoutout to pioneers @zeamETH, @ReamLabs, @PierTwo_com, @geanclient, @ethlambda_lean, as well as established consensus teams Lighthouse, Grandine, and soon Prysm. This incredible teamwork is coordinated by @corcoranwill via weekly PQ interop calls. → PQ workshops: Building on last year's PQ workshop in Cambridge (see photo), the EF is hosting another 3-day PQ event in October. Top experts from around the world will convene. In addition, a PQ day is set for March 29 in Cannes just ahead of EthCC. → PQ FV and AI: Last week Alex Hicks (@alexanderlhicks) ran a specialised maths AI for 8 hours, at a $200 cost. It one-shotted a formal proof one of the hardest lemmas in the foundations of hash-based snarks. Mind-blowing. Applied cryptography will never be the same. → PQ roadmap: A comprehensive breakdown of the EF's proposed PQ strategy will be shared soon™ on pq[.]ethereum[.]org. The roadmap targets a full transition in coming years with zero loss of funds and zero downtime. Stay tuned :) → PQ education: The ZKPodcast (@zeroknowledgefm) is producing a 6-part video series on Ethereum's PQ strategy. EF Enterprise Acceleration is also preparing material for enterprises and nation-states. Finally, Ethereum is now represented on the PQ advisory board that Coinbase announced yesterday. Believe in something. Believe in PQ security.

Craaazy 365 days of @leanEthereum progress. Cheers to the builders. Cheers to the dreamers. Cheers to anti-fragility, too :) Devcon, Bangkok — Nov 12, 2024. The suspense is real. The room overflows; hundreds can't get in. An "announcement of an announcement" had sparked wild speculation about my "most ambitious initiative". Who knew the beam chain vision would evolve into lean Ethereum? Next-level ambition, seeping into all layers of L1. Snarks for consensus and execution. Fort mode and beast mode. What's new? zkEVMs. Real-time proving. Full validation in a tab, on a phone. Let's pump L1 gas with the exponential snark curve. Starting in months, not years. To me it all points to 10K TPS, the gigagas frontier. Dream bigger dreams for L1. Believe in something. ——— part 1—lean consensus devnets → clients: 4 new lean CL clients (Zeam, Ream, Qlean, Lantern) → languages: 3 new CL languages (Zig, C++, C) → specs: by @tcoratger + 14 others; 3SF-mini subspec by @vitalikbuterin → testing: revamped test framework by @fselmo2; @Sib_Katya metrics → devnets: multi-client 3SF with 4s slots and 12s finality; PQ soon™ coordination → hires: EF Protocol coordinators @corcoranwill and @ladislaus0x → CL teams: led by @Gajpower, @unnawut, @kamil_abiy, @mstore80 → 7 consensus calls: teams, PQ, p2p, exit queue, APS, 3SF, PQ specs → Cannes workshop: 1 day at EthCC in June; interop kicked off → 13 interop calls: by @corcoranwill on Wednesdays at 2pm UTC → Cambridge Oct workshops: 1 day leanVM, 3 days PQ, 3 days CL cryptography → leanSig: 3 papers on hash sigs by Benedikt, @khovr, @kudinov_mikhail → leanVM: fast minimal aggregation zkVM by Emile → WHIR: fast Plonky3 implementation by @tcoratger → optimisoors: @AngusGruen, @GiacomoFenzi, @lambdaclass, @kiliconu → Poseidon2: 4 cryptanalysis workshops by @khovr, @asanso → maths: $1M Millennium-like proximity prize; papers flowing → formal verification: ArkLib by @QuangVDao research → consensus team: hires @yannvon and lead @robsaltini join @luca_zanolini → faster finality: 1- or 2-round designs with Ethereum-grade liveness → 3sf-gold: new fast inclusion by @fradamt, @vitalikbuterin from Cambridge → p2p: @qdrvm_io simulator; @raulvk ethp2p; @soispoke leanp2p → rainbow staking: new Cambridge ideas; specs by Dan Goron & Alex Vlad ——— part 2—lean execution zkEVM tech → real-time proving: ~100 engineers pushing across ~10 zkVM teams → GPU proving: 16 5090s (10kW) proving mainnet; $0.01/block → guests: revm (Reth), levm (Ethrex), evmone (Zilkworm), ZKSync OS → more guest programs: Geth, Besu, Nethermind and others soon™ → RISC-V: de facto ISA of choice for zkEVM proving → Picus: prolific Veridise tool to identify under-constraints → formal verification: $4M across 40 grants by @alexanderlhicks Ethproofs community → zkVM integrations: Airbender, OpenVM, Pico, R0VM, SP1, Ziren, ZisK → other integrations: Cysic, Fermah, Marlin, Snarkify, Zilkworm, ZkCloud → website: driven by @fbwoolf under new EF Ethproofs team → 7 calls: zkVMs, RTP, gigagas, RISC-V, native rollups, proximity gaps → Ethproofs day: Nov 22 at Devconnect; register at ethproofs[.]day → zkAttester demo: my home validator on zkEVM proofs at Ethproofs day EF zkEVM team → new team: led by @kevaundray with Cody, Han, Ignacio, Radek, Sophia → EF blog post: real-time proving requirements by @_sophiagold_ → zkLighthouse: modified Lighthouse client by @kevaundray → zkEVM/acc: @ignaciohagopian benchmarks; @codytouchgrass tests → more zkEVM/acc: @kevaundray standardisation; Ere by @han__0110 future of EL → Fusaka: per-tx gas limit (EIP 7825); MODEXP killer (EIPs 7823, 7883) → EVM 2.0: @vitalikbuterin proposal to enshrine RISC-V under the EVM → native rollups: championed by @lucadonnoh; wrote book and draft EIP → gas auto-pumps: 3x/year gas pumps (EIP-7938 by @dankrad) → gigagas L1: champion wanted—reach out :) gigagas@ethereum.org