Arbitrum advances ZK settlement, L1 withdrawals are expected to be shortened from several days to several hours

The Arbitrum development team stated that they are introducing zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs into the Arbitrum platform to achieve a multi-proof settlement model. Through ZK proofs, the settlement time of Arbitrum blocks to Ethereum L1 is expected to be reduced from several days to several hours, while enhancing user, cross-chain bridge, and protocol capital efficiency, and maintaining security through the multi-proof mechanism. Related capabilities are aimed at Arbitrum One and dedicated chains based on the Arbitrum platform. Offchain will subsequently submit upgrade proposals to the DAO.

Current progress includes: the ability to run the same state transition functions in SP1 zkVM as in optimistic execution, generating ZK proofs for real mainnet block production; Stylus's WASM contracts can be proven alongside Solidity contracts; the team has launched an independent Rust verifier, making ZK proofs a first-class mode alongside standard verification; the BoLD settlement protocol has supported the acceptance of ZK proofs and is endorsed by a fast confirmation committee, while the original dispute games still serve as a fallback path, forming a multi-proof architecture that coordinates ZK proofs, proof committees, and fraud proofs.

The team claims to be continuously reducing proof costs and will gradually merge related code into the Nitro main production path. The next steps include further optimizing proofs and shifting to Reth-based execution, completing L1 message inbox proofs, and integrating ZK settlement capabilities into node configurations for on-demand activation across chains.