Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the Poseidon hash function series, developed over many years, has delivered important practical value in Ethereum and other fields and will continue doing so for years. He identified Poseidon as a key reason modern privacy protocols can quickly generate SNARK (succinct cryptographic proof) proofs on clients. Buterin also said general-purpose STARK (scalable cryptographic proof) systems now offer very high performance, with proof overhead for almost any batch computation reduced to the three-digit range. He said the figure could fall to two digits or lower in the future, exceeding expectations from the early 2020s.