Ameen Soleimani, a prominent developer of X, criticized Ethereum’s reluctance to implement Poseidon precompile. in update In a recently shared article, Soleimani expressed concern about Ethereum’s reluctance to implement this hash function, which is required for efficient zk proofs.
Insights into Poseidon’s precompilation delay
According to Soleimani, this same feature will be used in other blockchains such as Solana, Starknet, and Stellar from 2020 to 2022. He criticized the Ethereum community as follows: Always talking about “default privacy” But they refuse to make the necessary technological upgrades to guarantee that.
Soleimani argues that if the current situation continues, privacy will not be truly enabled on Ethereum because a key element is missing: the zkEVM feature.
eth geeks create a “privacy by default” roadmap, but do not implement precompilation for Poseidon (Poseidon is the most proven efficient hashing algorithm for verification with ZK proofs)
Meanwhile Solana, Starknet and Stellar all have it… pic.twitter.com/sWj49RWQB7
— Amen Soleimani (@ameensol) February 27
The developer claimed that the Starknet team tried to offer some level of support to the Ethereum chain but was turned down. Soleimani claims that Ethereum has privacy gaps and is a call to action for the Ethereum team.
He is of the opinion that Ethereum needs to adapt to the current ZK rollup requirements and improve the chain. In particular, EIP-5988 has proposed adding Poseidon to EVM addresses starting in 2022, but this has not been implemented. Development remains stalled, causing delays in native shielded transfers.
It is important to clarify that “precompiling” is a built-in, low-cost feature that can significantly reduce Ethereum gas fees. So Ethereum’s continued use of Poseidon without precompilation makes app privacy impractical at layer 1.
Soleimani claimed that Poseidon is already the “most battle-tested” hash function and has enjoyed utility in the ZK system, and opined that given its reliability, there is no real acceptable reason to delay its deployment.
He criticized Ethereum’s roadmap for continuing to push privacy to layer 2 rather than layer 1 owning it. Soleimani wants Layer 1 to continue to have core zk primitives because without them private transactions are too expensive.
Privacy roadmap promises contradict slow implementation
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin announced in April 2025, New privacy roadmap.
Despite promises of serious commitment, implementation remains a challenge and remains a controversial issue in this area.
Ernst & Young’s Paul Brody acknowledged the cost-prohibitive nature of privacy features on Ethereum and expressed hope that blockchain might actually be operational in 2026. Mr. Brody said he would like to see it. Implementing privacy It is becoming mainstream for users and institutions.
