Vitalik: Re-examining the "Cottage in the Woods" concept, ZK technology changes the trade-off logic of blockchain

Vitalik Buterin recently stated that he no longer fully agrees with the old view of blockchain as "only recording transaction order, not committing to state," and explained the reasons for his change in perspective.

Vitalik pointed out that his early opposition to this idea was primarily based on the fact that if the chain does not commit to state, ordinary users must either fully verify all transactions from the genesis block or be forced to trust a single third-party service provider, both of which are not ideal options. In contrast, designs like Ethereum that commit to the state root in the block header allow for the verification of any state through Merkle proofs under the "majority honest" consensus assumption, which is much more feasible. He emphasized that the real game changer is the development of zero-knowledge technologies like ZK-SNARKs, which make it possible to verify the correctness on-chain without re-executing all transactions, thus "achieving both security and scalability."

Additionally, Vitalik reflected on the uncertainties in the real world: network interruptions, service provider shutdowns, consensus centralization, and censorship risks can occur at any time. Therefore, the blockchain system must always retain a fallback that is "self-verifiable without relying on others." In his view, the "cabin in the woods" is not a model for everyone to live in daily, but rather a safety net in extreme situations, and it is also an important leverage against intermediaries and service providers. Maintaining such a minimally viable and autonomously usable path is an indispensable part of Ethereum's long-term evolution.