Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of Consensys, said the network could become a fully zero-knowledge (ZK) proof-based protocol within three to five years. The statement was made during an interview published on June 10, 2026 by The Block, in which he defended the evolution of Ethereum’s scalability roadmap.
According to Lubinadvances in ZK testing, and mainnet improvements are strengthening the rollup-centric model that Ethereum has followed over the past few years. The executive noted that the incorporation of technologies such as the Lean Ethereum project, a proposal to simplify and scale the main network, and the expansion of cryptographic verification systems they could gradually transform the network architecture.
“Ethereum could become a protocol completely based on zero-knowledge proofs,” said Lubin, who believes that this transition would not only strengthen the security and efficiency of the base layer (L1), but also improve the interaction with second layer networks (L2).
It is worth noting that the proposal arrives in a moment of internal review for Ethereum. Over the past few months, several of its top leaders have reevaluated the so-called rollup-centric roadmap, originally designed to solve scalability issues through an ecosystem of semi-interconnected chains that settle their transactions on the mainnet.
Among the critical voices is Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, who noted earlier this year that the original vision had not fully materialized. and that many second-layer solutions had become, at best, “branded shards,” as CriptoNoticias reported. From that review, the Ethereum Foundation once again prioritized direct improvements to the base layer to make it faster, cheaper, and more competitive compared to other networks.
Despite these criticisms, Lubin maintains that L2s continue to be a fundamental piece of the ecosystem. In his opinion, these networks have served as experimentation environments for complex technologies which can later be moved to Ethereum. As an example, he highlighted the advances in real-time ZK tests that projects such as Linea and Gnosis are already developing.
The manager explained that these technologies could allow the execution of transactions synchronously between different networks compatible with Ethereum. In that scenario, Users could move assets between ecosystems without using bridgesone of the main sources of risk and friction within the sector. Additionally, liquidity currently dispersed across multiple networks could be integrated into a more unified environment.
We always knew that zero-knowledge proofs were going to be important in our ecosystem. We thought that they would first have relevance in second layer networks. And we were right.
Joseph Lubin.
Lubin also linked this evolution to the vision of Ethereum as an infrastructure capable of supporting practically unlimited demand. As he explained, the initial fragmentation generated by the rollups was a deliberate decision to allow different solutions to explore different technological approaches before converging on more efficient standards.
For now, the discussion reflects one of the main challenges facing Ethereum today: increasing its capacity without sacrificing decentralization or security. Initiatives like Lean Ethereum They aim to exceed 10,000 transactions per second on the mainnet, while ZK test development seeks to simultaneously solve scalability, interoperability and privacy issues.
If this strategy comes to fruition over the next few years, Ethereum could move towards a model in which the separation between the base layer and second layer networks is practically invisible to users. More than a technical improvement, the objective would be reduce the fragmentation that has accompanied the growth of the ecosystem and offer a unified experience in an environment increasingly oriented towards institutional adoption and massive transaction processing.