A new mempool design could make quantum-secure signatures and private transactions very cheap on Ethereum.
Today, Vitalik Buterin presented the arguments in favor EIP-8288a proposed feature film that he co-wrote and which he hopes to land in “I-star”, i.e. “the fork after Hegota”, suggesting that it is a strong follow-up as a result of frame transactions (aka EIP-8141).
What’s the scoop?
- The pitch: Vitalik has listed various possible unlocks here, namely 1) Significantly cheaper quantum-secure signatures, 2) low-cost, quantum-secure privacy protocols, 3) support for any future signature or proof system, and 4) “private account abstraction”, e.g. changing ownership across all your onchain positions in a single transaction without revealing what has moved.
- How it would work: The transactions would be attached to a dependency framework (a list of assertions such as “this signature is valid for this data”) instead of the raw cryptographic proof itself. Mempool nodes then run a loop approximately every half-second, aggregating everyone’s proofs into a single combined proof per tick and reducing proof-related bandwidth even though transactions are still broadcast individually.
- Big win: With this design, the entire cryptographic overhead of a block is reduced to a single proof (100-300 KB) plus a small 96-byte tag per claim, regardless of how many individual signatures or private transactions are bundled together.
- The trap: To achieve this, Ethereum must agree on a shared set of instructions for writing these proofs, and Vitalik noted that RISC-V is currently the “leading candidate” for this.
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