Hidden Challenges on the Permanent Path: Is ZK-EVM Truly the Solution for Ethereum?

The heated debate over the development direction of Ethereum is dividing the crypto community. Fund manager Justin Bons has issued profound criticisms of the network’s ZK-EVM strategy, asserting that Ethereum’s current roadmap on this perpetual path risks creating unpredictable consequences.

Performance Deadlock: High-End GPUs Still Not Enough

Bons points out a concerning reality: to produce Zero-Knowledge proofs for Ethereum, builders need to equip ultra-powerful GPU rigs costing from $80,000 to $200,000. Even with this massive financial investment, block creation speed remains at 8-12 seconds.

This figure becomes worse when compared to competitors. Solana operates with block times under 1 second and significantly lower hardware costs. Bons argues that this discrepancy is not accidental – it is an inevitable consequence of pairing ZK proofs with Ethereum.

Centralization Vortex: When Technology Becomes a “Poison”

A deeper issue lies in the network architecture. Ethereum is heading toward a Proposer Builder Separation (PBS) model combined with ZK-EVM, and according to Bons, this shifts power from decentralized validators to a small group of builders capable of affording expensive hardware.

As costs increase linearly with capability, Ethereum faces a tough choice: either limit performance to prevent centralization or accept centralization to increase throughput. Both options violate the core principles on which this network was built.

Between Two Perspectives: Philosophy vs. Practicality

Vitalik Buterin recently emphasized that Ethereum was not designed to optimize latency or financial efficiency, but to free people from centralized control. This viewpoint reveals a clear boundary: decentralization is prioritized over absolute performance.

However, Bons believes that the ZK-EVM roadmap on this perpetual path is doing the opposite – it creates covert centralization without promising competitive throughput. This is a contradiction he cannot accept.

2026 Roadmap: Is There Enough Time?

Planned upgrades in 2026 aim to increase capacity by adjusting gas limits and deploying ZK proofs. Bons considers these changes not only too late but also ineffective. Even if implemented, they will not solve the network’s core speed problem.

He argues that Ethereum is deliberately slowing down to match the computational limits of ZK proofs, and this decision cannot be justified from both technical and philosophical perspectives.

Community Debate

When a community member asked whether Ethereum could survive if ZK-EVM requires $100,000 hardware but still lags behind Solana, Bons responded candidly: survival is possible, but growth is not guaranteed. He pointed out that Ethereum currently handles only 1/138 of Solana’s processing capacity and 1/30 of its speed.

Some other developers are more optimistic, believing future upgrades will allow ZK nodes to run on modest hardware. Bons dismisses this view, stating that current data shows no feasible path forward without major breakthroughs in cryptography – breakthroughs that the community has been waiting for years but have yet to materialize.

This debate reflects deep tensions between technical ambitions and practical limitations in blockchain development.