Vitalik Buterin now puts forward the Goldwasser – Kalai – Rothblum (GKR) method so that zero knowledge proofs on Ethereum run faster. The plan claims to cut the price of verification and to speed up the checks that a computation was done correctly. ZK-EVM writers, rollup operators and teams that watch latency plus bills will feel the change.
GKR started in pure cryptography and was later reshaped so that the prover’s work grows in a straight line with the circuit size instead of as the cube of that size. The trick is to record only the inputs and the final outputs — every middle value stays uncommitted — so the proof stays small but also cheap to handle.
In real numbers, the method checks about two million small steps each second and turns the old ~100× verification blow up into a 10–15× blow up.
Mechanics and performance of GKR
The write up says this gives a 30–50% speed gain for verification and a lower dollar price per proof, and that GKR outruns other fast protocols by a factor of 1.5 to 5 when the same sub circuit repeats many times. The user sees shorter finality delays, room for heavier real time contracts and smaller bills for validators and rollup runners.
The method lines up with Ethereum’s wider targets — Pectra, single slot finality, statelessness — but live code will appear only after client or rollup teams finish benchmarks in the next few quarters. Product and compliance staff should weigh cost, speed and privacy before they schedule any pilot.
In practice, GKR points to faster and cheaper verification on Ethereum, creating space for more demanding real time contracts and cost savings for operators, while privacy needs a ZK‑SNARK wrapper and timelines depend on upcoming benchmarks.
