Last updated on March 10th, 2026 at 11:54 am
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has cautioned that abandoning the Poseidon hash function in planned state tree upgrades could significantly reduce prover efficiency across the network. His remarks come as developers weigh options to replace Ethereum’s current state structure with a binary tree design aimed at improving scalability and enabling zero-knowledge integration.
Buterin said Poseidon delivers an order-of-magnitude improvement in proving performance compared to traditional hash functions, a gain he described as decisive for Ethereum’s long-term roadmap. The debate forms part of broader execution layer discussions that include changes to the state tree and potential virtual machine upgrades.
BLAKE is beautiful and good.
It would be really sad to lose the order of magnitude of prover efficiency that Poseidon provides though. In particular, that gain is decisive in two places:
1. Hash-based signature aggregation (incl recursive aggregation)
2. Being able to prove the…— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 2, 2026
Prover efficiency is central to scaling plans
According to Buterin, Poseidon’s performance advantage is particularly critical in two areas. The first is hash-based signature aggregation, including recursive aggregation, where efficient hashing directly lowers computational costs. The second is enabling extremely fast state tree proofs, which would allow Ethereum to separate block proving into a fast stateful layer and a slower stateless proving layer.
In that model, block builders would generate rapid state proofs locally before sending blocks and their associated proofs to external high-capacity provers. This separation could create a flexible backup system in which large-scale compute clusters, including AI infrastructure, could be redirected to Ethereum, proving within minutes. Without such separation, provers would need to download and maintain the full state, a process that could become increasingly burdensome as state size grows.
Security and hash function tradeoffs
While acknowledging the need for strong security assurances around Poseidon, Buterin urged continued research to solidify confidence in its design. At the same time, he encouraged efforts to improve the efficiency of proving for alternative hash functions such as Blake, potentially through new cryptographic techniques that narrow the performance gap.
Meanwhile, a user says the shift from EVM to RISC-V isn’t just optimization, it’s a philosophical redesign of Ethereum as a minimal, cheaper-to-prove verification layer. They argue it’s one of 2026’s most overlooked infrastructure bets, especially as AI x crypto teams may not be pricing in the impact on proving costs.
Buterin also referenced the Ethereum Foundation’s “Strawman” roadmap, signalling expectations for progressively shorter slot and finality times as upgrades continue.
Enjoyed this piece? Bookmark DeFi Planet, explore related topics, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Threads and CoinMarketCap Community for seamless access to high-quality industry insights.
“Take control of your crypto portfolio with MARKETS PRO, DeFi Planet’s suite of analytics tools.”
