Ethereum: Vitalik Buterin Unveils GKR Protocol to Accelerate ZK-EVM and zk-ML with Poseidon Hash Efficiency

COINOTAG News reports that Vitalik Buterin introduced the GKR protocol, a foundational framework designed to accelerate proof generation for ZK-EVM and zk-ML workloads. The design targets multi-layer low-level processing with repeated function applications such as hashing and neural networks, while removing the need to commit to intermediate layers and focusing solely on input and output data, thereby boosting efficiency.

Key optimizations include reducing the sumcheck per round via Gruen’s trick and enabling Poseidon2 batch processing. The framework presents theoretical results showing Poseidon hash overhead around 15x, substantially better than traditional STARKs at roughly 100x, with potential further reductions in practice.

As data volumes scale, the existing overhead is expected to trend toward negligible levels, delivering greater throughput for ZK-based applications and a scalable zk-rollups ecosystem.