Debate Between Polygon (MATIC) and Ethereum (ETH) Co-Founders: Is Verkle Tree Needed For Ethereum?

The debate between Polygon (MATIC) co-founder Mihailo Bjelic and Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin has sparked discussions within the crypto community about the future of Ethereum’s data storage. The topic of contention? Verkle Trees.

During a conversation on the X app, Bjelic questioned the suitability of switching Ethereum to Verkle Trees, citing the potential zk-fication of the network in the near future. Buterin quickly responded, pointing out the limitations of the current Merkle Patricia trees used by Ethereum and highlighting the zk-friendly design of Verkle Trees.

The primary data structure of Ethereum, the Merkle Patricia tree, is set to be replaced by Verkle Trees due to their shorter proofs and increased bandwidth. Bjelic, drawing on the capabilities of Polygon zkEVM, suggested that the current structure could accommodate the 300MB benchmark set by Buterin in just 12 seconds, albeit requiring approximately 10 server-class CPUs.

This discussion comes on the heels of Polygon zkEVM’s push to upgrade to a Type 2 ZK-EVM, bringing it closer to the Ethereum mainnet. The upgrade aims to empower developers to deploy their codes on Polygon zk-EVM as they would on Ethereum, signaling a significant shift for smart contract protocol developers.

While the upgrade has faced some challenges, including a temporary downtime of nearly 10 hours, the issues have since been resolved. As the crypto community awaits further developments, the debate over the necessity of Verkle Trees for Ethereum continues to unfold.