Vitalik Buterin announces good news about the new Ethereum update.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed EIP-8288, a project aimed at significantly reducing the cost of quantum-resistant transactions. Buterin stated that he hopes this proposal, dubbed the STARK recursive mempool, will be included in the planned I-star upgrade following the Hegota upgrade.
The goal of EIP-8288 is to move signatures and cryptographic proofs outside of Ethereum's core execution process, integrating them with STARK recursive proofs within the transaction pool. This is intended to significantly reduce both the computational load on the blockchain and data costs.
The cost of quantum-secure transactions on the Ethereum network could be significantly reduced.
According to Buterin, the system could offer significant advantages, particularly in terms of quantum-protected signatures and privacy-focused protocols. Currently, the cost of quantum-protected transactions that provide privacy can reach approximately 10 million gas, but with the advent of EIP-8288, this is projected to drop to tens of thousands of gas.
Another notable aspect of the proposal is its ability to support next-generation signature systems or proof-of-work systems, such as Falcon and ML-DSA, without requiring any changes to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It has also been stated that EIP-8288 could pave the way for applications that enhance privacy through account abstraction.
According to the proposal, Ethereum nodes will periodically merge dependencies between transactions to generate recursive STARK proofs. Block producers will then generate the necessary proofs to include the transactions in a block. The system's blockchain overhead is estimated at approximately 100-300 KB of STARK proofs per block and 96 bytes of additional data for each statement being verified.
Buterin also noted that this approach could facilitate the transformation of the RISC-V architecture into the standard instruction set for recursive STARK transactions in the Ethereum ecosystem. If EIP-8288 is included in the I-star upgrade, it would represent a significant step forward for Ethereum's long-term quantum stability and privacy infrastructure.