Ethereum has come a long way from its early days to becoming the next foundational layer for global financial settlement. Today, it is trusted by institutions to settle billions of dollars, and entire industries are being built on its infrastructure. But with that growth has come increasing pressure to scale. 

Ethereum was never just about speed or scale. It was built to be an open, decentralized, neutral platform: one where anyone, anywhere, could deploy and interact with smart contracts without relying on centralized middlemen or gatekeepers.

To address the growing need for scalability, Layer 2 (L2) solutions were introduced. These are meant to be a core part of Ethereum’s long-term success by enabling faster and cheaper transactions while preserving the security and decentralization of the mainnet. However, as with any decentralized and community-driven ecosystem, different teams naturally explore varied approaches.

For example, some introduce new gas tokens, modify the EVM with custom opcodes, or implement governance structures that shape how value flows through their ecosystems. These decisions reflect the diversity of experimentation across the L2 space, but they can also introduce trade-offs that affect Ethereum's cohesion and long-term alignment.

Linea, however, was built to offer an Ethereum-centric model. Developed by contributors to Ethereum’s original architecture, Linea remains true to Ethereum’s core purpose and vision. It uses ETH as its native gas token, preserves the EVM exactly as it is, and is guided by governance structures designed to reinforce Ethereum’s broader ecosystem. Every part of Linea’s architecture and incentive structure is designed to strengthen Ethereum while solving for scale. 

In the sections that follow, we’ll explore what Ethereum equivalence means, why it matters, and how Linea achieves it.

Being equivalent to Ethereum means executing every operation with bit-for-bit accuracy to the mainnet. This means the same gas cost, the same opcode behavior and edge cases, so that smart contracts behave identically whether they run on Ethereum or Linea.

Why is this important? 

For developers, Ethereum equivalence ensures that smart contracts behave the same way on Layer 2 as they do on mainnet. This removes the need to rewrite, audit, or maintain separate versions of a dapp across environments, further simplifying and reducing development. If it works on Ethereum, it should work on Linea. No surprises, no workarounds.

For institutions, it means staying aligned with the canonical EVM specification, the result of over a decade of battle-tested infrastructure and billions of dollars in R&D. It offers a reliable, well-understood foundation that businesses can build on with confidence.

For Ethereum, it preserves network effects by ensuring that Layer 2s are not siphoning activity into parallel ecosystems, but instead, reinforcing Ethereum as the single, unified platform. Without this fidelity, Ethereum risks becoming just another settlement layer rather than the cohesive backbone of decentralized applications and digital finance.

Linea achieves Ethereum equivalence through four key design decisions:

1. Using direct arithmetization over zkVM approaches (eg RISC-V)

2. Relying on Vortex as the core proving system

3. Maintaining upgrade parity with Ethereum

4. Designing tokenomics that drive value back to Ethereum

To understand why Linea opts for direct arithmetization over RISC-V-based approaches, it helps to first define some key terms.

Arithmetization

Arithmetization refers to the process of converting computational logic, such as programs, circuits, or virtual machines, into mathematical constraints that can be verified using cryptographic proofs. In the context of zero-knowledge proofs, arithmetization is a crucial step for translating the logic of a virtual machine (like the EVM or RISC-V) into a form that proving systems can reason about.

zkEVM vs zkVM
zkEVMs (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines) are specialized virtual machines that replicate Ethereum’s EVM logic in zero-knowledge circuits. They allow developers to deploy existing Solidity contracts without any modifications, preserving full compatibility with the mainnet. This means developers benefit from Ethereum’s tooling, standards, and bytecode while gaining scalability via zk rollups.

In contrast, zkVMs (zero-knowledge Virtual Machines) are general-purpose VMs that prove the execution of programs compiled to instruction sets like RISC-V. Projects like RISC Zero and SP1 use zkVMs to support multiple languages and execution environments beyond just Ethereum. However, this flexibility introduces trade-offs: performance inefficiencies due to missing RISC-V instructions, incomplete formal verification pipelines, and increased complexity from custom compiler toolchains.

While zkEVMs are purpose-built for Ethereum equivalence, zkVMs prioritize broader programmability at the cost of EVM compatibility and performance.

Direct arithmetization is an approach where each component of the EVM is directly encoded into mathematical circuits, representing the system in a set of constraints without any intermediate abstraction layer. In contrast, the RISC-V approach involves first implementing a zkVM for the RISC-V ISA and then running an emulated version of the EVM compiled down to RISC-V within that zkVM.

The benefits of direct arithmetization are significant. By working directly with EVM operations, Linea achieves higher performance and efficiency, avoiding the overhead introduced by EVM emulation on a zkVM.

This method also reduces potential bug surfaces since it avoids complex compiler pipelines that translate EVM bytecode into RISC-V assembly. These pipelines are still undergoing formal verification and remain immature.

RISC-V, while minimalistic and flexible, lacks elementary operations such as ADDCARRY. As a result, tasks that are trivial on other ISAs can require multiple cycles, leading to 2 to 3 times the performance overhead. Moreover, not all RISC-V features have been incorporated into zk circuits, requiring custom patches and forked toolchains.

Today, most major zkEVM L2 projects, including Scroll and Polygon zkEVM, are adopting RISC-V-based approaches or exploring zkVMs built on RISC-V to simplify their prover pipelines and leverage general-purpose tooling. In contrast, Linea is the only major L2 currently using a direct arithmetization approach for the EVM.

This gives it tighter control over performance, gas equivalence, and mainnet compatibility, while others prioritize flexibility even if it comes at the cost of efficiency.

While many ZK projects adopt STARK-based systems, Linea has opted for Vortex, an in-house-built STARK-based proof system that offers theoretical performance advantages crucial for achieving high throughput.

Vortex is a polynomial commitment scheme (PCS) and proof system built in-house by the Linea team. It is designed for efficient zero-knowledge proofs and, at its core, commits to computation traces using a combination of SIS (Short Integer Solution) hashes and Merkle trees to encode and verify data efficiently.

Unlike traditional STARK-based PCS approaches, which typically build Merkle trees directly over encoded Reed-Solomon traces such as in FRI-based schemes like Plonky3, Vortex introduces an intermediate SIS hashing step before constructing the Merkle tree, significantly reducing commit times. 

Recent benchmarks show that Vortex outperforms other leading STARK-based alternatives, achieving up to 3x better performance in commitment operations compared to FRI-based approaches. Vortex also supports advanced field extensions, allowing it to preserve these performance gains while remaining adaptable for future cryptographic upgrades.

Linea uses Vortex because its speed and scalability directly support the goal of full Ethereum equivalence. Unlike traditional FRI-based approaches, Vortex significantly reduces prover time, enabling near real-time proof generation. Benchmarks show commit times as low as 1.176 seconds for Vortex compared to 4.33 seconds for Plonky3 under similar conditions. 

It also scales efficiently with larger computation traces, offering theoretical performance boosts of 30x to 300x as optimizations progress.

While verifier times may be slightly longer with Vortex, the trade-off is well worth it. Prover speed is the primary bottleneck for Layer 2 performance, and Vortex’s efficiency ensures that smart contracts on Linea run with no discrepancies or delays compared to mainnet, preserving bit-for-bit accuracy.

In addition to Vortex, Linea’s prover stack includes Arcane (a cryptographic compiler), Wizard (a flexible zero-knowledge proof framework), and GKR (used for batching hash proofs). Together, they create a highly efficient and reliable system capable of supporting Ethereum-level throughput.

By September, Linea will be fully caught up with Ethereum’s latest upgrades. Until recently, Linea only supported features up to the London upgrade (August 2021), leaving out key enhancements introduced in Shanghai, Cancun, and Prague/Electra. This created friction for developers, who had to rely on workarounds or maintain separate codebases to deploy their dapps.

Because Linea is committed to bit-for-bit equivalence with Ethereum, incorporating upgrades requires more than simple opcode swaps or parameter changes. Each update must be re-implemented as a cryptographic circuit and rigorously tested to match Ethereum’s behavior. As the only zkEVM using this approach today, the engineering effort is substantial, but it is a necessary investment to ensure complete compatibility with mainnet.

Soon, after months of dedicated engineering effort, Linea will support all the latest EVM upgrades, including Prague/Electra. For developers, this will unlock immediate benefits:

• Cheaper dapp deployments, thanks to reduced gas costs from recent upgrades.

• No more maintaining two separate codebases, one for Linea (London) and another for mainnet (Prague/Electra). Developers can now deploy the same smart contracts across both environments without modification.

• Full support for EIP 7702, meaning externally owned accounts (EOAs) on Linea can now act like smart contract accounts (SCAs), opening up more advanced wallet capabilities and programmable interactions natively.

Deploying on Linea will feel exactly like deploying on Ethereum, but with the scalability benefits of zk rollups and the confidence that dapps will run as intended, without surprises.

As discussed earlier, L2 networks vary in how they approach value distribution and ecosystem alignment, particularly when it comes to gas fees and tokenomics.

Linea takes a distinctive approach designed to strengthen Ethereum directly. Our tokenomics model is designed to return value directly to Ethereum by allocating 20 percent of all net income from gas fees to buy and burn ETH. This mechanism reduces ETH supply over time, reinforcing its role as Ethereum’s native utility token and increasing its long-term value. 

The remaining 80 percent of net gas income will be used to burn LINEA. This creates a sustainable value cycle where network growth leads to more LINEA burned, enhancing scarcity and long-term utility.

To learn more about Linea’s governance and tokenomics design, check out our detailed governance and tokenomics overview blog.

For those who believe in ETH’s future as the foundation of global finance and digital trust, Linea offers a way to build that future without compromise. It extends Ethereum’s capabilities while preserving its neutrality, security, and decentralised ethos, never diverting value away from mainnet.

Linea is here to keep Ethereum strong for decades to come. See our documentation for next steps on how to build on Linea.