Vitalik Buterin Pushes for Standardized Efficiency Ratios in ZK and FHE Cryptography

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has urged developers working with zero-knowledge (ZK) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technologies to adopt a more transparent and practical method for measuring computational efficiency. In a post on X, Buterin suggested that cryptographic overhead should be expressed as a ratio comparing the time to compute within cryptography versus the time for raw operations, rather than relying on vague benchmarks like "N operations per second."

Buterin explained that this ratio-based approach is hardware-independent and provides a clear indicator of efficiency sacrifice when moving from trust-based to cryptographic computation. "It gives a very informative number: how much efficiency am I sacrificing by making my app cryptographic instead of trust-dependent?" he stated. He added that developers can easily estimate cryptographic performance by multiplying the raw computation time by the overhead factor, simplifying projections without complex hardware dependencies.

Buterin acknowledged challenges in achieving a perfect ratio due to heterogeneous operations, such as differences in proving versus executing, parallelization, and memory access patterns. However, he emphasized that an "overhead factor" remains a valuable and consistent efficiency indicator across various hardware setups.

Following his post, experts like Lukas Helminger and Matt McAteer engaged in discussions, highlighting complexities in benchmarking FHE systems due to network configurations and participant numbers. Buterin clarified that FHE typically involves a single party, with exceptions like threshold decryption, which aren't directly proportional to computational load. McAteer noted that proof size ratios are equally important for understanding ZK system scalability, while Muhammad Azhar supported ratio-based metrics for unifying comparisons across hardware and cryptographic schemes.

This call for standardization comes as ZK and FHE technologies gain traction in blockchain scalability, privacy, and decentralized computing, aiming to accelerate progress and transparency in next-generation cryptography.