Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said there is a 60% chance that SNARKs, fully homomorphic encryption and indistinguishability obfuscation eventually achieve computational overhead below 10 times ordinary processing costs. In a September 6, 2026, post, he measured overhead using total energy consumption and amortized computing expenses, while stressing that the estimate does not mean all three technologies will reach that threshold by 2030. SNARKs were the likeliest candidate to achieve single-digit overhead by decade-end. Buterin assigned a 33% chance that all three technologies eventually approach 1+ε overhead in average real-world use. Lower-cost SNARKs could support Ethereum's zkEVM roadmap by enabling validators to verify proofs for entire blocks and potentially raise gas limits without proportional increases in validator hardware. FHE could enable computation on encrypted data for applications such as private markets and sealed-bid auctions, while iO remains substantially less practical because of its high computational costs and unresolved security questions in some proposed approaches.