Ethereum’s quantum race takes a new turn as zkSync courts banks and Starknet weighs exit

ZkSync announced Airbender Prime, a prover that Matter Labs says handled 99% of 7,200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 10 seconds each on a single NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU.

The announcement came five days after Starknet said it is actively considering becoming an independent layer-1 (L1) blockchain, targeting full quantum resistance in 2027.

The two announcements answer the same deadline from opposite directions, since Ethereum's own target for L1 quantum resistance across execution, consensus, and data is December 2029.

The Ethereum Foundation defines real-time proving as 99% of mainnet blocks proven in 10 seconds or less, which fits Ethereum's 12-second slot and propagation assumptions.

ZkSync's result maps to that definition, including witness preparation, with every block finishing in under 12 seconds.

Airbender Prime uses hash-based STARKs that combine GKR sumcheck, WHIR polynomial commitments, and BLAKE2s hashing, with Keccak-256-based commitments for L1 proofs replacing BN254 pairings.

Nvidia rates the card at 600 watts of board power, and marketplace reporting puts it near $16,000. The Foundation's target framework also covers proof sizes under 300 KiB, a long-term 128-bit security level, on-premise capital spending near $100,000, and power draw under 10 kilowatts.

Full-system electricity use, proof sizes and long-term operating costs for Prime await independent measurement, and the Foundation's public proving program continues to evaluate security and reliability.

Ethereum's ECDSA account signatures, BLS validator signatures and KZG data commitments belong to separate protocol-level work, and the December 2029 target stands as published, a schedule the Foundation calls aggressive. The prover operates outside Ethereum's consensus protocol.

Quantum preparation arrives while standalone chains struggle to pay their way. Blast set an Oct. 26 user-exit deadline, saying maintenance costs exceeded revenue, and Abstract is shutting down.

Aave's risk provider LlamaRisk recommended winding down V3 deployments on six chains, including zkSync, saying zkSync, Scroll and Sonic each generated less than $5,000 in quarterly protocol revenue at current balances.

The evidence points to consolidation and specialization, and many layer-2 (L2) blockchains keep operating. Cheap execution earns too little on its own, and liquidity, distribution, compliance, and institutional access are becoming the defensible layers.