Ethereum has made a major shift regarding security issues. The foundation recently announced that it will completely abandon the pursuit of the goal of "speed" in the future and instead fully commit to the construction of 128-bit provable security—this standard must be achieved by the end of 2026, with no room for negotiation.

Why is it so strict? The 128-bit security level corresponds to the AES encryption standard, and with current computing power, it would take billions of years to crack. It sounds extreme, but the foundation's reasoning is solid: the previous near-real-time block proof scheme hides the risk of mathematical assumptions being overturned. Once the assumptions fail, falsifying proofs and tampering with L1 data is no longer a hypothesis. Systemic risks like this cannot be gambled with.

The zkEVM project is at the forefront. The timeline is very tight: it needs to integrate the official security testing tools by early 2026, pass a review with a threshold of 100 in the mid-term, and complete the compression optimization of proof data by the end of the year. In other words, there are three hurdles, and none of them can be vague.

The chain reaction of this decision will be significant. Some technical solutions may need to be redone, and some projects may struggle to keep up. However, from another perspective, the unification of security standards will indeed strengthen the foundation of Ethereum. The ecosystem will undergo a round of survival of the fittest, and the projects that remain should be more competitive. The key question is whether this upgrade cycle will hinder the innovation pace of the entire ecosystem?