Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed EIP-8288, a project aimed at significantly reducing the cost of quantum attack-resistant transactions. Buterin stated that he hopes the proposal, dubbed a recursive STARK mempool, will be included in the planned I-star update following the Hegota upgrade.
EIP-8288 aims to move signatures and cryptographic proofs outside of Ethereum’s core execution process, combining them with recursive STARK proofs within the mempool. This is intended to significantly reduce both on-chain computational load and data costs.
The Cost of Quantum Secure Privacy Transactions on Ethereum Could Drop Significantly
According to Buterin, the system could offer significant advantages, particularly in terms of quantum secure signatures and privacy-focused protocols. Currently, the cost of quantum secure privacy transactions can reach approximately 10 million Gases, but with EIP-8288, it is projected to decrease to only tens of thousands of Gases.
Another notable aspect of the proposal is its ability to support next-generation signature or proof-of-work systems like Falcon and ML-DSA without requiring any changes to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). It was also stated that EIP-8288 could pave the way for privacy-enhancing account abstraction applications.
According to the design, Ethereum nodes will periodically aggregate dependencies between transactions to generate recursive STARK proofs. Block creators will then generate the necessary proofs for transactions to be included in the block. The system’s overhead on the chain is estimated to be approximately 100 to 300 KB of STARK proof per block and 96 bytes of additional data for each claim to be verified.
Buterin also noted that this approach could contribute to making the RISC-V architecture the standard instruction set for recursive STARK transactions in the Ethereum ecosystem. If EIP-8288 is included in the I-star upgrade, it will represent a significant step forward for Ethereum’s long-term quantum resilience and privacy infrastructure.
*This is not investment advice.
