Vitalik Hails zkSync Airbender L1 Prover Breakthrough on 5090s

Ethereum researchers and developers celebrated a major technical leap this week. After zkSync’s Airbender prover demonstrated it could generate a full Ethereum L1 block proof. While using just two RTX 5090 GPUs. The achievement, confirmed ahead of the Ethproofs Day event in Buenos Aires. It drew high praise from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He called it a “huge milestone” for the network’s scalability roadmap.

Airbender Prover Pushes Ethereum Into “Gigagas” Territory

According to Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, the zkSync team achieved real-time proof generation. While using a single consumer-grade machine running two 5090 GPUs. Drake described the setup as “basically a toaster.” He highlights how low the hardware requirements have become for an operation. That historically demanded large data center resources.

Drake said the breakthrough could unlock “gigagas L1,” suggesting that Ethereum’s gas limit may rise significantly from current levels. Higher gas limits allow more transactions per block. This then reduces congestion and lowers fees across the ecosystem. Developers also expect L2 fees to move closer to zero as a result. This is making Ethereum more accessible to everyday users. The Airbender team plans to showcase the prover live at Ethproofs Day. Where developers from across the ecosystem gather to demonstrate advances in zero-knowledge technology.

Vitalik Praises Progress but Warns of Worst Case Gaps

While impressed by the speed improvements, Vitalik Buterin urged the community to remain cautious. He pointed out that proving times often differ dramatically between average and worst-case blocks. Sometimes by as much as 60 times. Vitalik Buterin explained that pushing for faster hardware alone won’t solve this gap. Instead, he suggested a more sustainable path

Repricing gas for operations that are extremely expensive for zk provers, such as RSA verification. By raising gas costs for those niche workloads. The network can avoid an arms race while still enabling a higher gas limit overall. Vitalik Buterin said this trade-off is fair as Ethereum moves into a new era of scaling. Where blocks must remain cheap to prove even under heavy usage.

Ethproofs Day Brings Builders Together

The timing of the Airbender announcement aligns with Ethproofs Day. A focused event at Devconnect featuring talks and demos from leading zk teams. The event is fully booked with more than 225 confirmed attendees and many more on the waitlist. Participants will spend the day hearing 15 minute research talks, panel discussions and rapid-fire lightning sessions. Devconnect will also provide all-day snacks, drinks and networking spaces across the venue. Although the event won’t be livestreamed. The recordings will be uploaded to the Ethereum YouTube channel after the conference.

A Breakthrough That Shifts Ethereum Scaling Timeline

The Airbender prover’s performance marks a meaningful shift in Ethereum’s scaling trajectory. For years, researchers assumed that proving full L1 blocks would demand specialized hardware or large clusters. Now, the path to consumer-grade proving appears much closer than expected. As Vitalik Buterin noted, Ethereum still needs to address worst-case performance. Yet the breakthrough already signals a future where block proving becomes decentralized cheap and fast. It is paving the way for a much more scalable Ethereum ecosystem.