Ethereum Foundation Explores SNARK-Based Layer1 Expansion

According to BlockBeats, on September 5, Ethereum Foundation core researcher Justin Drake addressed the future of Ethereum Layer1 expansion during the foundation's 12th AMA session. When asked about plans for further expanding Ethereum Layer1 as Layer2 solutions mature, Drake outlined the foundation's long-term sustainable strategy involving SNARK technology to enhance the mainnet's EVM execution without limitations. Drake explained that by implementing real-time L1 EVM SNARKing, verifiers can validate cost-effective SNARKs instead of naively re-executing EVM transactions. This approach would enable the mainnet to significantly increase the gas limit without burdening verifiers. The heavy EVM execution tasks would occur outside the consensus, managed by specialized nodes operated by entities such as searchers, builders, and explorers. Consequently, users and consensus participants could easily run their nodes on mobile devices or smartwatches. In addition to the vertical scaling benefits from substantially increasing the L1 EVM gas limit, there is also the potential for arbitrary horizontal scaling using EVM-in-EVM precompiles. This method allows for low-cost verification of EVM execution within the EVM itself. Developers could programmatically launch new L1 EVM instances, unlocking a boosted version of execution sharding with an unlimited number of shards, as opposed to a capped number of 64 or 1024 shards. Each shard would function as a programmable rollup with customizable governance, ordering, and gas, referred to as 'native rollups.'