Vitalik Buterin: ZK-EVM will become the third client for Ethereum and should facilitate the creation of an open, multi-client ZK-EVM ecosystem.

On April 2, in his latest article "How will Ethereum's multi-client concept interact with ZK-EVM?", Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin emphasized the importance of Ethereum's multi-client concept in maintaining its security and decentralization. Ethereum does not have a default "reference client" that everyone runs, but instead has a collaborative management specification and multiple teams implementing the specification (i.e. "clients"). In the long run, ZK-EVM will not only be used for ZK Rollup, but will also be used to verify the execution of Layer 1. ZK-EVM will become Ethereum's third client. However, the challenge with ZK-EVM is how it interacts with Ethereum's multi-client concept. To address this issue, Vitalik suggests that each client should wait for a proof compatible with its own implementation before accepting a valid block. This approach sacrifices some of the benefits of the multi-client paradigm, but it is ideal until all ZK-EVM implementations can be formally proven to be equivalent. However, this approach also faces some challenges, including block delay and low data efficiency.