{"id":879541,"date":"2025-12-21T23:18:45","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T05:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/21\/ethereum-shifts-focus-from-speed-to-security-with-new-2026-deadline\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T23:18:45","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T05:18:45","slug":"ethereum-shifts-focus-from-speed-to-security-with-new-2026-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/21\/ethereum-shifts-focus-from-speed-to-security-with-new-2026-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethereum Shifts Focus From Speed to Security With New 2026 Deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Crypto Journalist<\/p>\n

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Anas Hassan<\/p>\n

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Crypto Journalist<\/p>\n

Anas Hassan<\/span>\"Verified\"<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Part of the Team Since<\/p>\n

Jun 2025<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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About Author<\/p>\n

Anas is a crypto native journalist and SEO writer with over five years of writing experience covering blockchain, crypto, DeFi, and emerging tech.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Last updated:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Ethereum<\/p>\n

The Ethereum Foundation has set a new technical roadmap<\/a> prioritizing security over speed for zero-knowledge<\/a> Ethereum Virtual Machines<\/a> (zkEVMs), establishing three critical milestones stretching through the end of 2026. <\/p>\n

The shift comes after zkEVM teams successfully reduced proving times from 16 minutes to 16 seconds while cutting costs by 45 times, with 99% of Ethereum blocks now provable in under 10 seconds on target hardware.<\/p>\n

Despite these performance achievements, the foundation warned that security remains \u201cthe elephant in the room<\/em><\/strong>,\u201d with many STARK-based zkEVMs relying on unproven mathematical conjectures that recent research has begun to disprove. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf an attacker can forge a proof, they can forge anything: mint tokens from nothing, rewrite state, steal funds,<\/em>\u201d the foundation stated in a December 18 post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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zkEVMs crushed the 2025 boss: real-time proving \u2705<\/p>\n

2026 boss: 128-bit provable security\ud83d\udc7e<\/p>\n

New blog post on the next level for Ethereum zkEVMs: three milestones, paving the path to mainnet-grade L1 zkEVMs.https:\/\/t.co\/mueR1JWW6c<\/a><\/p>\n

Game on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2014 George Kadianakis (@asn_d6) December 19, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Provable Security Becomes Non-Negotiable Standard<\/span><\/h2>\n

The foundation established 128-bit provable security as the mandatory target for mainnet-grade zkEVMs, aligning with standards recommended by cryptographic standardization bodies.<\/p>\n

The first milestone requires zkEVM teams to integrate their proof system components with soundcalc, a newly created security estimation tool, by the end of February 2026.<\/p>\n

By May 2026, teams must achieve 100-bit provable security with final proof sizes under 600 kilobytes while providing compact descriptions of their recursion architecture.<\/p>\n

The final milestone requires 128-bit provable security, with proof sizes limited to 300 kilobytes, and formal security arguments for recursion soundness by year-end 2026.<\/p>\n

George Kadianakis from the EF cryptography team emphasized the strategic timing of securing zkEVM architectures before they become moving targets. <\/p>\n

\u201cOnce teams have hit these targets and zkVM architectures stabilize, the formal verification work we\u2019ve been investing in can reach its full potential,<\/em>\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Recent cryptographic advances, including compact polynomial commitment schemes like WHIR, techniques such as JaggedPCS, and well-structured recursion topologies, now make these ambitious security targets achievable. <\/p>\n

The foundation plans to publish detailed technical posts in January outlining proof system techniques for reaching the security and proof size requirements.<\/p>\n

Foundation Expands Institutional Adoption Push<\/span><\/h2>\n

While tightening technical standards, Ethereum has simultaneously accelerated institutional outreach<\/a> through its new \u201cEthereum for Institutions<\/strong>\u201d portal launched in October.<\/p>\n

The platform guides enterprises and financial institutions building on Ethereum\u2019s infrastructure, highlighting the network\u2019s decade-long reliability with over 1.1 million validators and continuous uptime.<\/p>\n

The foundation emphasized privacy-preserving technologies, including zero-knowledge proofs, fully homomorphic encryption, and trusted execution environments, as essential for compliant institutional applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrivacy solutions are no longer theoretical \u2014 they\u2019re live and scaling in production,<\/em>\u201d the foundation noted, pointing to projects like Chainlink, RAILGUN, and Aztec Network.<\/p>\n

Ethereum currently hosts over 66% of all tokenized real-world assets according to RWA.xyz<\/a>, with major financial firms including BlackRock, Securitize, and Ondo Finance deploying tokenized instruments.<\/p>\n

\"Ethereum
Source: RWA.xyz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JPMorgan Chase recently launched its first tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum<\/a>, seeding the MONY fund with $100 million and opening it to qualified investors with minimum investments of $1 million through its Kinexys Digital Assets platform.<\/p>\n

The bank\u2019s asset management head, John Donohue, told the Wall Street Journal there is \u201ca massive amount of interest from clients around tokenization<\/em>,\u201d adding that JPMorgan expects to lead the space with product offerings that match traditional money-market funds on the blockchain.<\/p>\n

Simplicity Challenge Emerges as Critical Priority<\/span><\/h2>\n

A few days ago, Co-founder Vitalik Buterin identified<\/a> protocol complexity as a fundamental threat to Ethereum\u2019s trustlessness in a December 18 statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn important and underrated form of trustlessness is increasing the number of people who can actually understand the whole protocol from top to bottom,<\/em>\u201d Buterin wrote, arguing the ecosystem should accept fewer features if necessary to improve understanding.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The concern resulted from the growing tension between advanced functionality and accessibility as Ethereum\u2019s technical abstractions multiply.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf only five people can understand how your privacy protocol works, you haven\u2019t achieved trustlessness, you\u2019ve just changed who you trust,<\/em>\u201d privacy-focused layer-2 network INTMAX stated.<\/p>\n

The foundation acknowledged these challenges in its roadmap, describing Ethereum as \u201ctoo complex<\/em><\/strong>\u201d for most users while outlining plans for smart contract wallets that simplify gas fees and key management.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the foundation temporarily paused open grant applications<\/a> for its Ecosystem Support Program in August, citing plans to shift toward more targeted infrastructure funding after awarding nearly $3 million to 105 projects in 2024 alone.<\/p>\n

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\n Tomi Roberie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crypto Journalist Anas Hassan Crypto Journalist Anas Hassan Part of the Team Since Jun 2025 About Author Anas is a crypto native journalist and SEO writer with over five years of writing experience covering blockchain, crypto, DeFi, and emerging tech. Last updated:\u00a0 December 21, 2025 The Ethereum Foundation has set a new technical roadmap prioritizing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":879542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25740,26530],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-879541","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ethereum","8":"category-shifts"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}