Vitalik Buterin has talked about the passing of Ethereum’s data structure. Mihailo Bjelic, one of the co-founders of Polygon, started a discussion on Crypto X about the capabilities of Verkle trees when compared to the widely used Merkle Patricia trees and Buterin contributed a number of reasons why Ethereum should seriously consider making a switch. Buterin argues that the current data structure is doing its job well. However, it does not fit the Zero-Knowledge protocols (ZK) that are required to create the scalability and efficiency of Ethereum.
Buterin brought up some problems with the existing Merkle Patricia trees utilized by Ethereum. The large witness sizes of these trees, which can be as big as 300 MB, made him say that these trees are not good for ZK applications. Buterin emphasized that adopting this structure is not a starting-less action for ZK adaptation. The discussion was initiated with the question by Mihailo Bjelic, who is the co-founder of Polygon, about whether there is a possibility of this kind of change given ZK integration.
Vitalik Buterin praises Verkle Trees for Ethereum
Bjelic, the co-founder of Polygon, noted that their protocol, especially the zkEVM, was able to meet the current requirements, which is the 300 MB size mentioned by Vitalik Buterin. He observed that with quite significant computational resources, in particular, around ten server-class CPUs, the situation could be controlled within the issue of a total block time of 12 seconds. But he did see the drawbacks of this kind of approach and the need for a better solution.
Vitalik Buterin likes the architecture of Verkle trees, as they comprise vector components that are useful for ZK technologies. The structural modification is expected to make the proofs shorter to give more bandwidth, simplify the verification processes, and, basically, increase the overall network performance.
The prospects for further development of Ethereum
Verkle trees transition is a part of Ethereum’s approach to the ZK protocols implementation in general, which is being realized mostly by means of its Layer-2 solutions. These are designed to increase transaction throughputs, lower gas fees, and increase scalability. In its quest for market competitiveness due to the increasing demand and the dynamics of the blockchain environment, the integration of ZK technology, enabled by Verkle trees, is critical for Ethereum.
