Ethereum Advances Modular Infrastructure Without Hard Forks

Author: William M. Peaster (Senior Analyst at Bankless)

Compiled by DeepChain TechFlow

Shenchao Overview: The lengthy progression of All Core Developers (ACD) governance and hard fork cycles has historically been the primary bottleneck in the evolution of Ethereum’s underlying rules. However, recent months have seen a series of concentrated, compositional breakthroughs in Ethereum’s peripheral infrastructure:

Paradigm's new compiler, Solar, reduces contract deployment and execution costs by up to 35%;

The Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) testnet Rollup X demonstrated L2 signature integration with L1 spot cross-layer atomic settlement and post-quantum signature verification;

The FCR rule compresses L2 deposit confirmations to 13 seconds; evm.fast establishes formal mathematical bounds for block proofs under worst-case scenarios.

Ethereum is reimagining the decentralized finance paradigm through modular collaboration, bypassing the lengthy hard fork process.

Imagine a brand-new decentralized finance lending market: fully built on an Ethereum Layer 2 Rollup network, yet capable of directly liquidating collateral into Ethereum L1’s vast spot liquidity pool during liquidations.

Even more impressive: this lending market has extremely low launch and deployment costs, significantly reducing interaction barriers and gas fees for ordinary users; deposited funds almost instantly arrive within seconds; and its underlying Rollup can reliably submit state proofs to the Ethereum mainnet every 12 seconds, even under the most severe network congestion conditions.

Undoubtedly, the ideal system I outlined above has not yet been fully implemented today. However, the gap between such a system and reality is now much closer than it was a month ago. More intriguingly, all the core modules required to build this system have been collaboratively developed entirely outside Ethereum’s slow and deliberate hard fork process.

In fact, several key pieces required to assemble this financial engine have made significant advances in just the past week, including:

1. Solar: A new Rust-based Solidity compiler from Paradigm;

2. Rollup X: The first experimental network built on the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) architecture;

3. Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR): Welcome the milestone new public test version;

4. evm.fast: An open challenge competition focused on formal proof limits for Ethereum blocks.

Next, let’s break down the underlying logic of these core building blocks and reassemble them to clearly reveal the technological transformation they enable.

First, Solar is an incredibly impressive underlying innovation in the recent ecosystem. In short, it can significantly reduce the cost of deploying and executing Ethereum smart contracts without requiring any Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) intervention.

On November 2, top venture capital firm Paradigm officially released Solar v0.3, a fully rewritten, Rust-based Solidity compiler—the core tool responsible for translating high-level code into Ethereum Virtual Machine executable bytecode—and the first version capable of reliably producing production-grade bytecode. Developers can now seamlessly invoke it directly via command-line parameters within the Foundry development suite.

According to Paradigm’s official test data, smart contracts compiled with Solar achieve an average 26% reduction in deployment costs and approximately 5% lower runtime Gas consumption for subsequent interactions, compared to the industry-standard solc compiler.

These results were also strongly validated in early real-world DeFi project tests. For instance, in practical testing of the Origin stablecoin protocol’s codebase, without any modifications to the business logic code, contract deployment costs decreased by 35%, and average gas expenses per call were reduced by approximately 4%.

Currently, the only limitation is that Solar's official documentation explicitly advises against directly deploying it in mainnet production environments handling large sums of funds, as the project is still in a phase of rapid iteration. Additionally, optimization effects vary slightly across different projects. For example, when the decentralized exchange Ekubo migrated its development branch to Solar, 166 gas test metrics decreased, while 12 metrics saw slight increases. Nevertheless, the efficiency potential it demonstrates is undeniable.

Secondly, Rollup X sets a new standard for seamless cross-chain interaction on Ethereum.

The Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) is a core frontier initiative led by Gnosis and ZisK, co-funded by the Ethereum Foundation, with the primary goal of enabling "synchronous composability" for the Ethereum mainnet and various Rollups. In other words, it allows smart contracts on one chain to cross-chain invoke logic on another chain and consume the returned data within the same atomic transaction—should any branch of the process fail, the entire transaction will be seamlessly rolled back without loss.

During Devcon this year, EEZ officially launched its first public test network, Rollup X, alongside live demonstrations of groundbreaking use cases. In one scenario, the aggregator CoW Swap successfully routed user-signed swap orders from Rollup X directly to Ethereum L1 mainnet spot liquidity for execution, and returned the swapped assets back to Rollup X within the same atomic transaction. In another scenario, Rollup X rapidly verified post-quantum signature algorithms off-chain, enabling L1 smart contracts to execute secure operations based on this verification.

Undoubtedly, this technology is still in the process of maturing. Real-time zero-knowledge proofs are expected to be fully realized by 2027, and the Gnosis team has cautiously advised that this testnet is not currently suitable for locking large volumes of real assets. However, Rollup X has already given the entire industry a glimpse of the future technological endpoint.

Again, Fast Confirmation Rules (FCR) can reduce processing delays for critical scenarios such as cross-chain deposits from several minutes to just a few seconds.

In the current public chain environment, the vast majority of L2 scaling networks and cross-chain bridges must wait for Ethereum mainnet finality before confirming deposits, a process that typically takes up to 13 minutes. According to authoritative educational material from the Ethereum Foundation, the FCR mechanism can mark a block as fast-confirmed within a single block slot (approximately 13 seconds) by directly tallying immediate attestation proofs submitted by validator nodes.

The theoretical model of FCR did not emerge out of thin air; the Gnosis cross-chain bridge had already been applying it to asset transfer channels initiated on Ethereum since October 8. What truly ignited the industry was the dramatic reduction in developer integration complexity. On November 4, leading node service provider QuickNode officially launched the public test version of FCR and seamlessly integrated it into the existing secure block marker interfaces already widely used by major applications. As Ethereum researcher Julian Ma remarked, “The technical barriers to industry-wide adoption of FCR have been completely eliminated.”

It should be noted that FCR’s security foundation relies on the assumption that at least 75% of staked validator nodes are online, honest, and submit their proofs on time. In the event of extreme network instability, the system will automatically revert to a conservative, traditional finality confirmation process to eliminate the rare risk of blockchain reorganizations on rapidly confirmed blocks.

Finally, the EVM.Fast challenge is tackling the worst-case boundaries of zero-knowledge proofs at the mathematical foundation level.

The technical ambition of "millisecond-level real-time proof for Ethereum" entirely depends on whether the prover can keep pace with the production of every block. Under normal conditions, this has largely been achieved: according to Gnosis, ZisK currently compresses proof generation time for 99.9% of Ethereum blocks to under 10 seconds. However, the true Achilles' heel lies in long-tail extreme scenarios. To date, no one has mathematically defined the maximum computational load of a single maliciously constructed block, meaning that, in theory, an exceptionally complex block could completely overwhelm the prover.

To overcome this theoretical ceiling, the Ethereum Foundation, in collaboration with zkSecurity and Verity Labs, officially launched the evm.fast challenge on November 2 on the Yukon research platform. Participating teams must use the Lean formal theorem proving tool to mathematically derive and strictly prove the absolute upper bound on the number of RISC-V machine instructions required to verify any Ethereum block.

At the start of this math competition, the theoretical upper limit recorded on the leaderboard was infinity, meaning any team that derives the first finite, mathematically verifiable absolute constant will immediately claim the top spot.

Each of these four cutting-edge pillars is transformative on its own. But only when they are seamlessly integrated can they unlock an entirely new paradigm of decentralized finance on-chain. Let’s return to the next-generation lending market model mentioned at the beginning.

Diagram: Next-generation DeFi lending model architecture bypassing hard forks

In this new architecture, these four key components will work together seamlessly:

Leverage Solar for rapid market deployment: Most lending protocols require deploying entirely new independent contract instances when launching new lending pairs; significantly reducing compilation and deployment costs will generate substantial compounding effects as the protocol scales. More importantly, interest settlement and liquidation logic are frequently invoked during every loan, repayment, and liquidation—even saving a few percentage points in runtime gas per interaction can accumulate into massive wealth for end users over time.

Solving cross-chain settlement challenges with EEZ: Previously, lending markets on emerging blockchains were consistently in a fragile, high-risk state, as local markets often lacked sufficient spot liquidity to promptly absorb large volumes of liquidated collateral during market crashes. With EEZ, liquidators can seamlessly route collateral directly to the deep spot liquidity pools on Ethereum L1, while simultaneously settling layer-2 debt within a single atomic transaction—where any failure triggers a full rollback. This enables Rollups to confidently list assets whose true liquidity resides on the mainnet, while arbitrageurs can maintain price parity without exposure to the risk of cross-chain bridge depegging.

Eliminate deposit waiting friction with FCR: Not all collateral assets are injected via synchronous calls; significant liquidity still originates from centralized exchanges and other multi-chain ecosystems. By introducing FCR, the lending market can rapidly credit collateral in approximately 13 seconds, significantly reducing idle capital periods and attracting off-chain liquidity to quickly step in during spikes in lending rates. In terms of risk control, the protocol can apply dynamic risk-adjusted discounts to quickly confirmed collateral before finality is achieved, inherently eliminating the possibility of bad debts caused by occasional blockchain reorganizations.

Use evm.fast to establish an absolute safety line for risk control: During market panic-driven sell-offs, blocks often become highly congested, making it easiest for attackers to deliberately construct high-latency proof blocks to disrupt the connection between Rollup and the mainnet, posing a systemic risk. Once the absolute computational upper bound of block proofs is mathematically formalized, network operators can precisely allocate sufficient computational redundancy to ensure that validity proofs are delivered on time in every slot—even under the most extreme market conditions. The system thus truly transforms from “usually fast enough” to “mathematically absolutely always fast enough.”

For end users, this evolution delivers an exceptionally intuitive experience: the ability to borrow and lend backed by mainnet-level liquidity depth, instant collateral deposit confirmation, extremely tight spreads and minimal slippage, all while paying lower gas fees—none of which requires waiting for Ethereum’s lengthy hard fork.

The example of the lending market is merely the tip of the iceberg for this suite of applications. By replacing the lending model with other directions, the same logical architecture can still provide comprehensive empowerment.

For example, with the post-quantum treasury architecture of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO):

The vault's multi-signature signers can authorize withdrawal requests using the quantum-resistant Falcon cryptographic algorithm; the Layer 2 Rollup is dedicated to efficiently processing and executing the computationally expensive signature verification calculations; subsequently, the Ethereum mainnet vault directly executes the fund transfer within the same atomic transaction, fully replicating the settlement workflow demonstrated by Rollup X.

Under this architecture, the Ethereum mainnet only needs to bear a small fraction of the total 5.5 million Gas cost for full Falcon signature verification—approximately 495,000 Gas, as demonstrated in Gnosis’s real-world test. Solar further reduces the operational cost of the verification contract, FCR accelerates the processing of donations and external funds, and the rigorously formally proven computational ceiling ensures the entire system never becomes congested.

From decentralized exchanges and cross-border payment networks to fully on-chain games, this new generation of infrastructure has the potential to reshape the entire landscape of decentralized applications. The Ethereum ecosystem’s menu of innovations has been significantly expanded, yet this evolution has not altered a single existing underlying protocol rule.

The slow pace of Ethereum's core developer governance process and hard fork implementation has long been an open secret in the industry. However, this caution and slowness are not inherently wrong—any changes to the underlying consensus rules that support an economy worth hundreds of billions of dollars must be pursued with extreme rigor and steadiness.

Figure: Comparison of In-Fork Upgrade and Out-of-Fork Evolution Mechanisms

But equally undeniable is the Ethereum ecosystem’s full capacity to bypass governance bottlenecks at the protocol level and expand technological boundaries through self-organized collaboration. The series of breakthroughs we’ve witnessed over the past week are a vivid testament to this bottom-up engineering innovation.

This trend will have a particularly profound impact on the field of quantum resistance. Ethereum core researcher Justin Drake has publicly stated that the primary obstacle to Ethereum’s quantum resistance upgrade is no longer the cryptographic technology itself, but rather the prioritization and scheduling within the core developer governance process.

Drake admitted that if all client development teams prioritized quantum security as their top concern, the relevant features could be delivered on mainnet within months; however, under the current pace of standard development timelines, this progress would be delayed until at the earliest the end of 2028. Yet, Rollup X’s Falcon signature implementation demonstrates to everyone that developers need not wait passively for mainnet— they can immediately put cutting-edge advancements into practical use today.

The pace of Ethereum’s underlying hard forks is unlikely to accelerate significantly in the future. More intriguing, however, is the question of how many sophisticated side solutions can emerge within the peripheral ecosystem during intervals between mainnet protocol upgrades, and whether the ecosystem’s decentralized oversight and evaluation framework can steadily keep pace with technological evolution.