Ethereum Foundation shifts to SHA2, BLAKE2s over Poseidon hash

The Ethereum Foundation said it will shift away from using the Poseidon hash function, which is specialized for SNARKs, on Ethereum’s layer-one network and instead use existing hash functions such as SHA2 and BLAKE2s. The change comes as advances in SNARK technology have sharply improved proof performance for traditional hash functions. The foundation said the focus had previously been on designing hash functions to suit SNARKs, but is now moving toward designing SNARKs themselves to work efficiently with existing hash functions. It added that SNARK proof performance for traditional hash functions has risen to around 1 million operations per second.