Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin yesterday presented a new cryptographic protocol GKR (Goldwasser–Kalai–Rothblum), which could revolutionize the way zero-knowledge proofs work on the popular network. This solution significantly reduces computational costs and increases the efficiency of verification on the blockchain.
What is the GKR protocol and how does it work?
GKR is an advanced cryptographic technique that allows computers to prove the correctness of complex calculations without revealing the input data. The protocol can verify two million calculations per second on standard laptops, and the entire verification of Ethereum transactions requires just fifty consumer graphics cards.
Traditional verification methods require computers to do a hundred times more work than the original calculations, while GKR reduces this to just 10-15 times more work. In practice, this means a drastic reduction in costs and hardware requirements for operations on the Ethereum network.
How GKR speeds up verification
Vitalik Buterin, in his detailed entry on the blog vitalik.eth.limo, compares the operation of GKR to a teacher checking his math homework. Instead of verifying every step of the calculation, the protocol focuses on key checkpoints and uses mathematical techniques to confirm the correctness of the final result.
GKR reduces the costs of ZK evidence by engaging only in input and output data, skipping all the heavy intermediate steps. This makes the protocol particularly effective for verifying repetitive tasks where the same operation is applied to large amounts of data.
Practical applications and the vision of Lean Ethereum
GKR fits into Buterin’s broader vision of “Lean Ethereum” – a simplified network architecture that is resistant to attacks by quantum computers. The protocol directly supports Ethereum’s pursuit of faster finalization, proof aggregation for rollups, and zero-knowledge evidence-based scalability.
Industry experts indicate that GKR’s potential goes beyond blockchain. The protocol will be used in the verification of machine learning models, where large models must demonstrate correct results without revealing the underlying data.
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The issue of privacy and integration with the ecosystem
It is worth noting that the GKR protocol itself is not a privacy technology – it deals with brevity, not confidentiality. To achieve zero-knowledge properties, GKR can be wrapped in existing ZK-SNARK or ZK-STARK systems.
The development of the GKR protocol coincided with the launch of the Ethereum Foundation’s 47-member “Privacy Cluster”, which aims to make privacy a default feature of the network rather than an optional add-on. Buterin has repeatedly emphasized that privacy is essential to Ethereum’s survival, comparing current public blockchains to the early internet before encryption standards were introduced.
The introduction of the GKR protocol is the next step in the evolution of Ethereum’s infrastructure, which is expected to become faster, cheaper and more accessible to both developers and end users.
