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Ethereum moves away from Poseidon for future layer-1 hash designs

An Ethereum researcher said the shift comes after proof-system improvements changed the proving cost tradeoff that previously favored Poseidon.

Reported · Written up by our desk · Market Structure

Ethereum is abandoning Poseidon for future layer-1 designs, pivoting to hashes such as SHA or BLAKE, according to a post by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake shared Aug. 13, after eight years of work on proof-friendly cryptography.

Drake said Ethereum Foundation researchers reported no break in Poseidon and did not issue a migration order, but noted that recent gains in SNARK proof systems changed the performance balance that made Poseidon appealing. SNARKs create compact proofs of correct computation, and Ethereum previously chose Poseidon because conventional hashes like SHA-256 and Keccak historically carried high proving costs in large prime-field arithmetic.

The update points to new research showing faster proving for binary- and hash-friendly approaches. The Flock paper, posted July 29, estimated that on an M4 Max core researchers could prove about 82,000 BLAKE3 compression evaluations, 42,000 SHA-256 compressions, and 30,000 Keccak permutations per second.

Drake framed the change as a reversal in cryptographic design needs, saying hash-friendly SNARKs reduce the necessity of SNARK-friendly hashes. He also tied the development to Ethereum’s broader security roadmap, which includes protocol simplification steps and plans to replace validator BLS signatures with hash-based leanXMSS signatures while using leanVM to aggregate data into compact proofs, where cheaper conventional-hash proofs could remove an obstacle.

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