Vitalik Buter2026-09-06 13:13:51Vitalik: Universal STARK Performance Exceeds Early Expectations, Future Overhead Could Drop to Double DigitsEthereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the Poseidon hash function family has created significant practical value in Ethereum and beyond. Modern privacy protocols rely on Poseidon to generate SNARK proofs quickly on the client side. Universal STARKs now achieve extremely high performance, with batch computation proof overhead down to three digits, and could drop to double digits or lower, exceeding early 2020s expectations.960
Vitalik Buter2026-09-06 13:14:50Vitalik Buterin: Poseidon Hash Series Has Generated Real Value, STARK Proof Costs Could Drop to Double DigitsEthereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that the Poseidon hash function series, after years of development, has generated significant practical value in Ethereum and other fields and will continue to play a role for years. Poseidon is a key reason modern privacy protocols can quickly generate SNARK proofs on the client side. Buterin also noted that general-purpose STARKs have achieved extremely high performance, with proof costs for batch computations reduced to three digits, and expected to drop to double digits or even lower, exceeding early-2020s expectations.950
Ethereum2026-08-14 03:53:48Ethereum Drops Poseidon for SHA2 and BLAKE2 in Layer 1 Post-Quantum ShiftEthereum is moving away from Poseidon at Layer 1, ending years of work around a hash function long favored in SNARK-based systems. On Aug. 13, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake said on X that the Ethereum Foundation had decided to abandon Poseidon in favor of traditional hash functions such as SHA2 or BLAKE2. The change comes after eight years of research, tens of millions of dollars in spending, and a broader reset of Ethereum’s post-quantum roadmap. The key technical driver is progress in binary-field SNARK design, which allows traditional hash functions to perform inside proving systems at speeds that were previously associated with SNARK-optimized designs. Drake said a laptop can now verify about 1 million conventional hash calls per second in a SNARK setting, while recent benchmarks from projects including Flock and SNARK.fast point to sharply improved throughput. The roadmap itself remains in place. Ethereum still expects a production-grade leanVM in 2027, followed by deployments across the consensus, execution, and data layers in 2028. The Foundation has also expanded its post-quantum work through pq.ethereum.org, weekly interoperability devnets involving more than 10 client teams, and two $1 million research prizes. The shift also comes as Solana and Starknet advance their own post-quantum plans using Falcon and BLAKE2-based transitions.1650
Toss2026-07-23 11:45:15Toss Partners With Poseidon to Open AI Data Market to 30 Million UsersPoseidon has partnered with Toss to bring its Numo contributor app into the financial platform, letting roughly 30 million users submit AI training data and receive payment, with records tracked on the DATA network.540
