The new Ethereum scaling infrastructure is here... Around April, I saw Vitalik propose that Ethereum should replace EVM with RISC-V. I asked a very enthusiastic Ethereum enthusiast @NPC_Leo at the time, and he recommended that I just look at Risc0 and Succinct—so I remembered these two names. Well, I suddenly found out that Succinct has already started its airdrop. I quickly checked to see what the project is up to now.

Oh, to put it simply, Succinct is developing a new generation of zkVM and has launched a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) system that breaks through the technical bottleneck of real-time proof on the Ethereum blockchain, potentially becoming a significant breakthrough in enhancing the performance of the Ethereum mainnet. This is because zero-knowledge proofs allow for batch execution of transactions off-chain, with proofs verified on-chain, without the need to fully re-execute.

In this way, if Ethereum L1 adopts real-time ZKP to verify transaction blocks, verification nodes will no longer need to completely re-execute all transactions, but can perform quick proof verification, thereby improving performance. That is, it can directly enhance the performance of the L1 mainnet beyond the rollup layer 2 scaling method. (Previously, an Ethereum supporter mentioned that expanding the mainnet is now a top priority.)

ARK Invest research team member Raye Hadi previously explained the technical roadmap outlined by the Ethereum Foundation. He stated the goals for the Ethereum mainnet's real-time proof: - 99% of block proofs generated in ≤10 seconds; - Proofers' hardware costs ≤$100,000 and power consumption ≤10 kilowatts; - Proof size ≤300KiB, minimizing bandwidth usage and adapting to Ethereum blocks.

According to recent reports, Succinct's zkVM has achieved the verification of 93% of 10,000 gas Ethereum blocks within 12 seconds on a 200-GPU cluster. Succinct's CEO expects to achieve real-time proof using a 16-GPU device at a cost of about $10,000 to $30,000 within a year.

What's more interesting is that currently, other zkVMs have not demonstrated production-level real-time proof capabilities under Ethereum's target gas limit. So, when Succinct starts doing airdrops and is about to issue tokens, it's definitely worth looking into how to participate. Thus, I went to ask @NPC_Leo. The teacher said: you might be too late... you'll just have to see how expensive it is after the TGE.