Vitalik Buterin Proposes Gas Cap for Ethereum’s ZK ’Endgame’—Here’s Why It Matters
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin just dropped a potential game-changer for zero-knowledge (ZK) scaling—a gas fee cap to streamline the network's 'endgame.' No more guessing at transaction costs or praying miners don't gouge you during peak hours.
Why This Isn't Just Another Crypto Pipe Dream
Buterin's proposal targets Ethereum's long-standing gas fee volatility—a headache for devs and traders alike. By capping ZK rollup costs, the network could finally achieve scalable, predictable transactions. Traders might even save enough for a Starbucks coffee (unlike those NFT bros who blew their rent money on Bored Apes).
The Fine Print: Will It Actually Work?
ZK tech promises faster, cheaper transactions, but implementation hurdles remain. Buterin's cap could force rollup providers to optimize—or get left behind. Either way, it's a stark reminder that even blockchain's brightest minds still wrestle with the same old problem: making crypto usable for normies.
“This is one more step towards the endgame of SNARKing everything, so that the entire internet of value flows through Ethereum,” he told Decrypt.
ZK-SNARKs, which “are quite complex,” can be used to increase Ethereum’s scalability while supporting privacy, Buterin wrote in a 2021 blog post. Using zero-knowledge proofs, a party can prove that a statement is true to another party without revealing any other information.
Developers are using zero-knowledge proofs in designing systems to manage the Ethereum network and execute code in smart contracts. Known as zkVMs, EIP-7983’s smaller transactions would make their design more predictable, the proposal states.
Theoretically, it’s possible for a zkVM to process transactions in smaller pieces, but “in practice, they have been very unwilling to do this due to the added complexity,” the proposal adds.
“We should just concede this point and make transactions smaller,” the proposal argues.
Gas represents the cost necessary to perform an Ethereum transaction, and fees are denominated in Gwei, a unit equal to one-billionth of one ETH. According to Etherscan, a basic Ethereum transaction cost 2.6 Gwei, or $0.18, as of this writing on Monday.
Requiring more computational power to process, the average “swap” cost $2.37, per Etherscan. Gas fees on Ethereum change moment-to-moment in response to network activity.
Without a gas limit for transactions in place, it’s possible for network participants’ workload to become “uneven,” affecting Ethereum’s overall stability, the proposal states. If transactions specify gas limits above 16,777,216, they would be rejected under the proposal.
In 2016, Ethereum faced two denial-of-service attacks that slowed the network’s ability to process transactions. Although a patch was rolled out then, and the vulnerability likely no longer exists, EIP-7983 would be a FORM of “added protection,” the proposal states.
Ethereum was recently changing hands around $2,550, a 0.7% drop over the past 24 hours, according to crypto data provider CoinGecko. The asset’s price surged in May following Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade, but it remains down 14% over the past year.
