The technological evolution of Ethereum is quietly changing. According to the latest insights from Hsiao-Wei Wang, Co-Executive Director of the Foundation, zero-knowledge cryptography has moved from pure theoretical research into the protocol implementation stage — a critical turning point.

Over the past two years, several significant breakthroughs have emerged in this field. The zkEVM native plan has surfaced, and research teams are planning solutions to enable the network to "natively support" zero-knowledge verification. Once this plan is implemented, Ethereum's transaction verification logic will be fundamentally rewritten. Imagine: transactions verified in seconds, computational costs significantly reduced, and network throughput greatly increased — this is not science fiction.

While current upgrades focus on Layer2 solutions and Blob space optimization, Wang clearly states that zero-knowledge protocol-level functionalities are imminent. The key change is that once this direction matures, the overall workload and resource consumption needed to secure the network will experience a qualitative leap.

From a technical perspective, this means three core benefits: first, a substantial improvement in computational efficiency; second, a true scalability breakthrough; and third, achieving these improvements while maintaining core values of censorship resistance, security, and neutrality. In other words, Ethereum is pursuing performance upgrades without sacrificing its fundamental decentralization.

This forward-looking technological layout determines Ethereum’s long-term position in the Web3 infrastructure competition. For ecosystem participants, this upgrade cycle is worth close attention.