Today, ZK technology has evolved from an esoteric cryptographic concept into a core component of blockchain infrastructure. Beyond supporting scalability and privacy, it is also demonstrating strategic value in interoperability, financial compliance, and frontier fields such as ZKML (zero-knowledge machine learning). With the continuous improvement of toolchains, hardware acceleration, and proof networks, the ZK ecosystem is rapidly moving toward large-scale and universal adoption.

Scalability, Privacy, and Interoperability & Data Integrity form the three fundamental application scenarios of ZK-based “trusted computation.” They directly address blockchain’s native pain points: insufficient performance, lack of privacy, and trust across multiple chains.

1. Scalability:  Scalability is both the earliest and most widely deployed use case for ZK. The core idea is to move transaction execution off-chain and only verify succinct proofs on-chain, thereby significantly increasing TPS and lowering costs without compromising security. Representative paths include:

• zkRollups (zkSync, Scroll, Polygon zkEVM): compressing batches of transactions for scaling.

• zkEVMs: building circuits at the EVM instruction level for native Ethereum compatibility.

• General-purpose zkVMs (RISC Zero, Succinct): enabling verifiable outsourcing of arbitrary logic.

2. Privacy: Privacy aims to prove the validity of a transaction or action without revealing sensitive data. Typical applications include:

• Private payments (Zcash, Aztec): ensuring transfer validity without disclosing amounts or counterparties.

• Private voting & DAO governance: enabling governance while keeping individual votes confidential.

• Private identity / KYC (zkID, zkKYC): proving “eligibility” without disclosing unnecessary information.
  

3. Interoperability & Data Integrity: Interoperability is the critical ZK path for solving trust issues in a multi-chain world. By generating proofs of another chain’s state, cross-chain interactions can eliminate reliance on centralized relays. Representative approaches include: zkBridges: cross-chain state proofs. Light client verification: efficient verification of source-chain headers on the target chain.  Key projects: Polyhedra, Herodotus.  Meanwhile, ZK is also widely used in data and state proofs, such as:Axiom, Space and Time’s zkQuery/zkSQL for historical data and SQL queries.and IoT and storage integrity verification, ensuring off-chain data is verifiably trusted on-chain.

Future Extensions On top of these three foundational scenarios, ZK technology has the potential to extend into broader industries:

• AI (zkML): generating verifiable proofs for model inference or training, enabling “trustworthy AI.” 

• Financial compliance: proof-of-reserves (PoR), clearing, and auditing, reducing reliance on trust.

• Gaming & scientific computing: ensuring fairness in GameFi or the integrity of experiments in DeSci.  

At its core, all of these represent the expansion of “verifiable computation + data proofs” into diverse industries.

In 2022, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin introduced the four types of zkEVMs (Type 1–4), highlighting the trade-offs between compatibility and performance:

• Type 1 (Fully Equivalent): Bytecode identical to Ethereum L1; lowest migration cost but slowest proving. Example: Taiko.

• Type 2 (Fully Compatible): Maintains high EVM equivalence with minimal low-level optimizations; strongest compatibility. Examples: Scroll, Linea.

• Type 2.5 (Quasi-Compatible): Slight modifications to the EVM (e.g., gas costs, precompile support), sacrificing limited compatibility for better performance. Examples: Polygon zkEVM, Kakarot (EVM on Starknet).

• Type 3 (Partially Compatible): Deeper architectural modifications allow most applications to run but cannot fully reuse Ethereum infrastructure. Example: zkSync Era.

• Type 4 (Language-Level Compatible): Abandons bytecode compatibility, compiling directly from high-level languages into zkVM. Delivers the best performance but requires rebuilding the ecosystem. Example: Starknet (Cairo).

This stage has often been described as the “zkRollup wars,” aimed at alleviating Ethereum’s execution bottlenecks. However, two key limitations soon became apparent: (1) the difficulty of circuitizing the EVM, which constrained proving efficiency, and (2) the realization that ZK’s potential extends far beyond scaling—into cross-chain verification, data proofs, and even AI computation.

Against this backdrop, general-purpose zkVMs have risen, replacing the zkEVM’s “Ethereum-compatibility mindset” with a shift toward chain-agnostic trusted computation. Built on universal instruction sets (e.g., RISC-V, LLVM IR, Wasm), zkVMs support mainstream languages such as Rust and C/C++, allowing developers to build arbitrary application logic with mature libraries, and then generate proofs for on-chain verification. Representative projects include RISC Zero (RISC-V) and Delphinus zkWasm (Wasm). In essence, zkVMs are not merely Ethereum scaling tools, but rather the “trusted CPUs” of the ZK world.

• RISC-V Approach: Represented by Risc Zero, this path directly adopts the open RISC-V instruction set as the zkVM core. It benefits from an open ecosystem, a simple and circuit-friendly instruction set, and broad compatibility with Rust, C, and C++. Well-suited for building a “general-purpose zkCPU,” though it lacks native compatibility with Ethereum bytecode and therefore requires coprocessor integration.

• LLVM IR Approach: Represented by Succinct SP1, this design uses LLVM IR as the front-end for multi-language support, while the back-end remains a RISC-V zkVM. In essence, it is “LLVM front-end + RISC-V back-end.” This makes it more versatile than pure RISC-V, but LLVM IR’s complexity increases proving overhead.

• Wasm Approach: Represented by Delphinus zkWasm, this route leverages the mature WebAssembly ecosystem, which is widely known to developers and inherently cross-platform. However, WASM instructions are more complex and less circuit-friendly, which limits proving efficiency compared to RISC-V and LLVM IR.

As ZK technology evolves, it is trending toward modularization and marketization:

• zkVMs provide the universal, trusted execution environment—the CPU/compiler layer of zero-knowledge computation—supplying the foundational verifiable compute for applications.

• zk-Coprocessors encapsulate zkVMs as accelerators, enabling EVM and other chains to outsource complex computations off-chain, then verify them on-chain through proofs. Examples include RISC Zero Steel and Lagrange, which play roles analogous to “GPUs/coprocessors.”

• zkMarketplaces push this further by decentralizing the distribution of proving tasks. Global prover nodes compete to complete workloads, creating a compute marketplace for zero-knowledge proofs. Boundless is a prime example.

Thus, the zero-knowledge technology stack is gradually forming a progression: zkVM → zk-Coprocessor → zkMarketplace. This evolution marks the transformation of ZK proofs from a narrow Ethereum scaling tool into a general-purpose trusted computing infrastructure. Within this trajectory, RISC Zero’s adoption of RISC-V as its zkVM kernel strikes the optimal balance between openness, circuitization efficiency, and ecosystem compatibility. It not only delivers a low-barrier developer experience but also extends through layers like Steel, Bonsai, and Boundless to evolve zkVMs into zk-Coprocessors and decentralized proof markets—unlocking far broader application horizons.

RISC-V is an open, royalty-free instruction set architecture not controlled by any single vendor, inherently aligned with decentralization. Building on this open architecture, RISC Zero has developed a zkVM compatible with general-purpose languages like Rust, breaking through the limitations of Solidity within the Ethereum ecosystem. This allows developers to directly compile standard Rust programs into applications capable of generating zero-knowledge proofs. As a result, ZK technology extends beyond blockchain smart contracts into the broader domain of general-purpose computation.

RISC0 zkVM: A General-Purpose Trusted Computing Environment
Unlike zkEVM projects that must remain compatible with the complex EVM instruction set, the RISC0 zkVM is built on the simpler, more flexible RISC-V architecture. Applications are structured as Guest Code, compiled into ELF binaries. The Host runs these programs through the Executor, recording the execution process as a Session. A Prover then generates a verifiable Receipt, which contains both the public output (Journal) and the cryptographic proof (Seal). Any third party can verify the Receipt to confirm the correctness of the computation—without needing to re-execute it.

The Release of R0VM 2.0 (April 2025): Entering the Real-Time zkVM Era
In April 2025, the launch of R0VM 2.0 marked the beginning of real-time zkVMs: Ethereum block proving time was reduced from 35 minutes to 44 seconds, costs dropped by up to 5x, user memory was expanded to 3GB, enabling more complex application scenarios. Two critical precompiles—BN254 and BLS12-381—were also added, fully covering Ethereum’s mainstream needs. More importantly, R0VM 2.0 introduced formal verification for security, with most RISC-V circuits already deterministically verified. The target is to achieve the first block-level real-time zkVM (<12-second proofs) by July 2025.

zkCoprocessor Steel: A Bridge for Off-Chain Computation
The core idea of a zkCoprocessor is to offload complex computational tasks from on-chain execution to off-chain environments, returning only a zero-knowledge proof of the result. Smart contracts need only verify the proof rather than recompute the entire task, thereby significantly reducing gas costs and breaking performance bottlenecks. RISC0’s Steel provides Solidity with an external proof interface, enabling outsourcing of large-scale historical state queries or cross-block batch computations—allowing even tens of Ethereum blocks to be verified with a single proof.

Bonsai: SaaS-Based Proving Service

RISC Zero’s Bonsai is an officially hosted Prover-as-a-Service platform that distributes proving tasks across its GPU clusters, delivering high-performance proofs without developer-managed hardware. With the Bento SDK, Solidity contracts can interact seamlessly with zkVM. By contrast, Boundless decentralizes the proving process through an open marketplace, making the two approaches complementary.

RISC Zero’s Full Product Matrix
RISC Zero’s ecosystem extends upward from the zkVM, gradually forming a complete matrix that spans the execution, network, marketplace, and application layers:

The ZK marketplace decouples the costly and complex process of proof generation, transforming it into a decentralized, tradable commodity of computation. Through globally distributed prover networks, tasks are outsourced via competitive bidding, dynamically balancing cost and efficiency. Economic incentives continuously attract GPU and ASIC participants, creating a self-reinforcing cycle. Boundless and Succinct are leading representatives of this emerging sector.

Concept & Positioning
Boundless is a general-purpose ZK protocol developed by RISC Zero, designed to provide scalable verifiable compute capabilities for all blockchains. Its core innovation lies in decoupling proof generation from blockchain consensus, distributing computational tasks through a decentralized marketplace mechanism.

Developers submit proof requests, and prover nodes compete to execute them via decentralized incentive mechanisms. Rewards are issued based on Proof of Verifiable Work, where unlike traditional PoW’s wasteful energy expenditure, computational power is directly converted into useful ZK results for real applications. In this way, Boundless transforms raw compute resources into assets of intrinsic value.

The ZK marketplace decouples the costly, complex process of proof generation and transforms it into a decentralized, tradable commodity of computation. Through globally distributed prover networks, tasks are outsourced via competitive bidding, dynamically balancing cost and efficiency. Economic incentives continuously attract GPU and ASIC participants, forming a self-reinforcing cycle. Boundless and Succinct are representative pioneers in this sector.

Architecture & Mechanism
The Boundless workflow consists of:

1. Request submission – Developers submit zkVM programs and inputs to the marketplace.

2. Node bidding – Prover nodes evaluate the task and place bids; once locked, the winning node gains execution rights.

3. Proof generation & aggregation – Complex computations are broken into subtasks, each generating zk-STARK proofs, which are then recursively aggregated into a single succinct proof, dramatically reducing on-chain verification costs.

4. Cross-chain verification – Boundless provides unified verification interfaces across multiple chains, enabling “build once, reuse everywhere.”
   

This architecture allows smart contracts to confirm computations by verifying a short proof—without re-executing heavy tasks—thereby breaking through gas and block capacity limits.

Ecosystem & Applications
As a marketplace-layer protocol, Boundless complements other RISC Zero products:

• Steel – An EVM zkCoprocessor for outsourcing complex Solidity execution to off-chain environments with proof-backed verification.

• OP Kailua – A ZK upgrade path for OP Stack chains, improving both security and finality.

Boundless targets sub-12s real-time proofs on Ethereum, enabled by FRI optimizations, polynomial parallelization, and VPU hardware acceleration. As prover nodes and demand scale, Boundless aims to form a self-reinforcing compute network—reducing gas costs while unlocking new application frontiers such as verifiable on-chain AI, cross-chain liquidity, and unbounded computation.

Boundless for Apps provides Ethereum and L2 applications with “infinite compute capacity” by offloading complex logic to the decentralized proving network, then verifying results on-chain. Its advantages include: unlimited execution, constant gas costs, Solidity/Vyper compatibility, and native cross-chain support.

At the core is Steel, the zkCoprocessor for EVM, enabling developers to build contracts with large-scale state queries, cross-block computations, and event-driven logic. Combined with the R0-Helios light client, Steel also supports cross-chain data verification between Ethereum and OP Stack. Projects including EigenLayer are already exploring integrations, highlighting its potential in DeFi and multi-chain interoperability.

Steel: EVM’s Scalable Compute Layer
Steel’s primary goal is to overcome Ethereum’s limits on gas, single-block execution, and historical state access. By migrating heavy logic off-chain and returning only proofs, Steel delivers near-unlimited compute with fixed verification costs.

In Steel 2.0, developers gain three major capabilities to expand contract design:

• Event-driven logic – Using event logs as inputs directly, removing reliance on centralized indexers.

• Historical state queries – Accessing any storage slot or account balance since Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade.

• Cross-block computation – Performing calculations spanning multiple blocks (e.g., moving averages, cumulative metrics) and committing them on-chain with a single proof.
  

This design significantly lowers costs and makes previously infeasible applications—such as high-frequency computation, state backtracking, and cross-block logic—possible. Steel is emerging as a key bridge between off-chain computation and on-chain verification.

Boundless for Rollups leverages the decentralized proving network to provide OP Stack-based L2s with faster and more secure settlement. Its core advantages include:

• Faster finality – Reducing settlement from 7 days to ~3 hours (Hybrid mode) or under 1 hour (Validity mode).

• Stronger security – Gradual upgrades from ZK Fraud Proofs to full Validity Proofs, achieving cryptographic guarantees.

• Decentralized progression – Powered by a distributed prover network with low collateral requirements, enabling rapid Stage 2 decentralization.

• Native scalability – Maintaining stable performance and predictable costs even on high-throughput chains.
  

OP Kailua: The ZK Upgrade Path for OP Chains
Launched by RISC Zero, OP Kailua is the flagship Boundless-for-Rollups solution. It allows OP Stack chains to surpass the performance and security limitations of traditional optimistic rollups.

Kailua supports two modes for progressive upgrading:

• Hybrid Mode (ZK Fraud Proofs) – Replaces multi-round interactive fault proofs with ZK Fraud Proofs, simplifying dispute resolution and cutting costs. The malicious actor bears the proving fees, reducing finality to ~3 hours.

• Validity Mode (ZK Validity Proofs) – Transitions to full ZK Rollup, eliminating disputes entirely with validity proofs, achieving sub-1-hour finality and the highest security guarantees.
  

Kailua enables OP chains to evolve smoothly from Optimistic → Hybrid → ZK Rollup, meeting Stage 2 decentralization requirements while lowering costs in high-throughput scenarios. Applications and tooling remain intact, ensuring ecosystem continuity while unlocking fast finality, reduced staking costs, and cryptographic security. Already, Eclipse has integrated Kailua for ZK Fraud Proofs, while BOB has migrated fully to ZK Rollup architecture.

Positioning & Mechanism
The Signal is Boundless’ flagship application—an open-source ZK consensus client. It compresses Ethereum Beacon Chain finality events into a single ZK proof, verifiable by any chain or contract. This enables trust-minimized cross-chain interoperability without multisigs or oracles. Its core value lies in giving Ethereum’s final state “global readability”, establishing a foundation for cross-chain liquidity and logic, while reducing redundant computation and gas costs.

Operating Mechanism

• Boost The Signal – Users can submit proof requests to “boost” the signal; all ETH is directed toward funding new proofs, extending signal longevity and benefiting all chains and apps.

• Prove The Signal – Anyone can run a Boundless prover node to generate and broadcast Ethereum block proofs, replacing multisig verification with a “mathematics over trust” consensus layer.

Expansion Path

1. Generate continuous proofs of Ethereum’s finalized blocks, forming the “Ethereum Signal.”

2. Extend to other blockchains, creating a unified multi-chain signal.

3. Interconnect chains on a shared cryptographic signal layer, enabling cross-chain interoperability without wrapped assets or centralized bridges.

Already, 30+ teams are contributing to The Signal. More than 1,500 prover nodes are active on the Boundless marketplace, competing for 0.5% token rewards. Any GPU owner can join permissionlessly. The Signal is live on Boundless Mainnet Beta, with production-grade proof requests already supported on Base.

Boundless has followed a clear phased development path:

• Phase I – Developer Access: Early access for developers with free proving resources to accelerate application experimentation.

• Phase II – Public Testnet 1: Launch of the first public testnet, introducing a two-sided marketplace where developers and prover nodes interact in real environments.

• Phase III – Public Testnet 2: Activation of incentive structures and the full economic model to test a self-sustaining decentralized proving network.

• Phase IV – Mainnet: Full mainnet launch, providing universal ZK compute capacity for all blockchains.

On July 15, 2025, the Boundless Mainnet Beta officially went live, with production deployment first integrated on Base. Users can now submit proof requests with real funds, while prover nodes join permissionlessly, with each node supporting up to 100 GPUs for bidding. As a showcase application, the team released The Signal, an open-source ZK consensus client that compresses Ethereum Beacon Chain finality events into a single proof verifiable by any chain or contract. This effectively gives Ethereum’s finalized state “global readability”, laying the foundation for cross-chain interoperability and secure settlement.

Boundless Explorer data highlights the network’s rapid growth and resilience:

• As of August 18, 2025, the network had processed 542.7 trillion compute cycles, completed 399,000 orders, and supported 106 independent programs.

• The largest single proof exceeded 106 billion compute cycles (August 18).

• The compute throughput peak reached 25.93 MHz (August 14), setting industry records.

• Daily order volume surpassed 15,000 orders in mid-August, with daily peak compute exceeding 40 trillion cycles, showing exponential growth momentum.

• Order fulfillment success rate consistently stayed between 98%–100%, demonstrating a mature and reliable marketplace mechanism.

• As prover competition intensified, unit compute costs dropped to nearly 0 Wei per cycle, signaling the arrival of a high-efficiency, low-cost era of large-scale verifiable computation.

Boundless has also attracted strong participation from leading mining players. Major firms such as Bitmain have begun developing dedicated ASIC miners, while 6block, Bitfufu, Powerpool, Intchain, and Nano Labs have integrated existing mining pool resources into ZK proving nodes. This influx of miners marks Boundless’ progression toward an industrial-scale ZK marketplace, bridging the gap between cryptographic research and mainstream compute infrastructure.

ZK Coin (ZKC) is the native token of the Boundless protocol, serving as the economic and security anchor of the entire network. Its design goal is to build a trusted, low-friction, and sustainably scalable marketplace for zero-knowledge computation.

The total supply of ZKC is 1 billion, with a declining annual inflation model: initial annual inflation at ~7%, gradually decreasing to 3% by year eight, and remaining stable thereafter. All newly issued tokens are distributed through Proof of Verifiable Work (PoVW), ensuring that issuance is directly tied to real computational tasks.

Proof of Verifiable Work (PoVW) is Boundless’ core innovation. It transforms verifiable computation from a technical capability into a measurable, tradable commodity. Traditional blockchains rely on redundant execution by all nodes, constrained by single-node compute bottlenecks. PoVW, by contrast, enables single execution with network-wide verification via zero-knowledge proofs. It also introduces a trustless metering system that converts computational work into a priced resource. This allows computation to scale on demand, discover fair pricing through markets, formalize service contracts, and incentivize prover participation—creating a demand-driven positive feedback loop. For the first time, blockchains can transcend compute scarcity, enabling applications in cross-chain interoperability, off-chain execution, complex computation, and privacy-preserving use cases. PoVW thus establishes both the economic and technical foundation for Boundless as a universal ZK compute infrastructure.

ZKC functions as the native token and economic backbone of Boundless:

• Staking & Collateral – Provers must stake ZKC (≥10× the maximum request fee) before accepting jobs. If they fail to deliver proofs on time, penalties apply: 50% slashed (burned) and 50% redistributed to other provers.

• Proof of Verifiable Work (PoVW) – Provers earn ZKC rewards for generating proofs, analogous to mining. Reward distribution: 75% to provers, 25% to protocol stakers.

• Universal Payment Layer – Applications pay proof fees in native tokens (ETH, USDC, SOL, etc.), but provers are required to stake ZKC. Thus, all proofs are ultimately collateralized by ZKC.

• Governance – ZKC holders participate in protocol governance, including marketplace rules, zkVM integrations, and ecosystem funding.

• Ecosystem Growth (49%)

  • 31% Ecosystem Fund: supports app development, developer tools, education, and infra maintenance; linear unlock over 3 years.

  • 18% Strategic Growth Fund: for enterprise integrations, BD partnerships, and institutional prover clusters; gradual unlock within 12 months, milestone-based.

• Core Team & Early Contributors (23.5%)

  • 20% Core team and early contributors: 25% cliff after 1 year, remainder vesting linearly over 24 months.

  • 3.5% allocated to RISC Zero for zkVM R&D and research grants.

• Investors (21.5%): Strategic capital and technical backers; 25% cliff after 1 year, remainder vesting linearly over 24 months.

• Community (6%)

  • Public Sale & Airdrop: strengthens community participation.

  • Public sale: 50% unlocked at TGE, 50% after 6 months.

  • Airdrops: 100% unlocked at TGE.
    

ZKC is the core economic and security anchor of the Boundless protocol.
It secures proof delivery through staking, ties issuance to real computational output via PoVW, underpins the universal ZK demand layer through collateralization, and empowers holders to guide protocol evolution. As proof demand grows and slashing/burning reduces circulating supply, more ZKC will be locked and removed from circulation—creating long-term value support through the dual forces of rising demand and contracting supply.

RISC Zero was founded in 2021. The team consists of engineers and entrepreneurs from leading technology and crypto organizations such as Amazon, Google, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Coinbase, Mina Foundation, and O(1) Labs. They built the world’s first zkVM capable of running arbitrary code and are now building a universal zero-knowledge computing ecosystem on top of it.

Core Team

• Jeremy Bruestle – Co-founder & CEO, RISC Zero
  Jeremy is a veteran technologist and serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in systems architecture and distributed computing. He previously served as Principal Engineer at Intel, co-founder and Chief Scientist at Vertex.AI, and co-founder and board member at Spiral Genetics. In 2022, he founded RISC Zero and became CEO, leading zkVM research and strategy to drive the adoption of zero-knowledge proofs in general-purpose computation.

• Frank Laub – Co-founder & CTO, RISC Zero
  Frank has deep expertise in deep learning compilers and virtual machine technologies. He worked on deep learning software at Intel Labs and Movidius and gained extensive engineering experience at Vertex.AI and Peach Tech. Since co-founding RISC Zero in 2021, he has served as CTO, leading the development of the zkVM core, the Bonsai network, and the developer tooling ecosystem.

• Shiv Shankar – CEO, Boundless
  Shiv has more than 15 years of experience in technology and engineering management, spanning fintech, cloud storage, compliance, and distributed systems. In 2025, he became CEO of Boundless, where he leads product and engineering teams to drive the marketization of zero-knowledge proofs and the development of cross-chain compute infrastructure.

• Joe Restivo – COO, RISC Zero
  Joe is an entrepreneur and operations expert with three successful exits. Two of his companies were acquired by Accenture and GitLab. He also teaches risk management at Seattle University’s Business School. Joe joined RISC Zero in 2023 as COO, overseeing company operations and scaling.

• Brett Carter – VP of Product, RISC Zero
  Brett brings extensive product management and ecosystem experience. He previously worked as a senior product manager at O(1) Labs. Since joining RISC Zero in 2023, he has served as VP of Product, responsible for product strategy, ecosystem adoption, and integration with Boundless’ marketplace initiatives.
  

Fundraising

In July 2023, RISC Zero completed a $40 million Series A round, led by Blockchain Capital. Seed round lead investor Bain Capital Crypto also participated, alongside Galaxy Digital, IOSG, RockawayX, Maven 11, Fenbushi Capital, Delphi Digital, Algaé Ventures, IOBC, Zero Dao (Tribute Labs), Figment Capital, a100x, and Alchemy.

A key competitor that combines both a zkVM and a zkMarketplace is Succinct, which consists of the SP1 zkVM and the Succinct Prover Network (SPN).

• SP1 zkVM is a general-purpose zero-knowledge virtual machine built on RISC-V with an LLVM IR front-end, designed to support multiple languages, lower development barriers, and improve performance.

• Succinct Prover Network (SPN) is a decentralized proving marketplace deployed on Ethereum, where tasks are allocated through staking and bidding, and the $PROVE token is used for payments, prover incentives, and network security.

In contrast, RISC Zero follows a “dual-engine” strategy: Bonsai provides an officially hosted Prover-as-a-Service with high performance and enterprise-grade stability, while Boundless builds an open decentralized proving marketplace that allows any GPU/CPU node to participate, maximizing decentralization and coverage though with less consistent performance.

RISC-V and Wasm represent two major approaches to general-purpose zkVMs:

• RISC-V is an open hardware-level instruction set with simple rules and a mature ecosystem, making it well-suited for circuit performance optimization and future verifiable hardware acceleration. However, it has limited integration with traditional Web application ecosystems.

• Wasm, by contrast, is a cross-platform bytecode format with native multi-language support and strong compatibility for Web application migration. Its runtime ecosystem is mature, though its stack-based architecture imposes lower performance ceilings compared to RISC-V.

Overall, RISC-V zkVMs are better suited for high-performance and general-purpose compute expansion, while zkWasm holds stronger advantages in cross-language and Web-oriented use cases.

X. Conclusion: Business Logic, Engineering Implementation, and Potential Risks

Zero-knowledge (ZK) technology is evolving from a single-purpose scaling tool into a general foundation for trusted computation in blockchain. By leveraging the open RISC-V architecture, RISC Zero breaks free from EVM dependency, extending zero-knowledge proofs to general-purpose off-chain computation. This, in turn, has given rise to zk-Coprocessors and decentralized proof marketplaces such as Bonsai and Boundless. Together, these components form a scalable, tradable, and governable layer of computational trust, unlocking higher performance, stronger interoperability, and broader application scenarios for blockchain systems.

That said, the ZK sector still faces significant near-term challenges. Following the peak of ZK hype in the primary market in 2023, the 2024 launch of mainstream zkEVM projects absorbed much of the secondary market’s attention. Meanwhile, leading L2 teams largely rely on in-house prover designs, while applications such as cross-chain verification, zkML, and privacy-preserving computation remain nascent, with limited matching demand. This suggests that open proving marketplaces may struggle to sustain high order volumes in the short term, with their value lying more in aggregating prover supply in advance to capture demand when it eventually surges.

Similarly, while zkVMs offer lower technical barriers, they face difficulty in directly penetrating the Ethereum ecosystem. Their unique value may lie instead in off-chain complex computation, cross-chain verification, and integrations with non-EVM chains.

Overall, the evolutionary path of ZK technology is becoming clear: from zkEVMs’ compatibility experiments, to the rise of general-purpose zkVMs, and now to decentralized proving marketplaces represented by Boundless. Zero-knowledge proofs are rapidly advancing toward commoditization and infrastructuralization. For both investors and developers, today may still be a phase of validation—but within it lies the foundation of the next industry cycle.

Disclaimer: This article includes content assisted by AI. While I have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information provided, there may still be errors or omissions. This article is for research and reference purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, solicitation, or any form of financial service. Please note that tokens and related digital assets carry significant risks and high volatility. Readers should exercise independent judgment and assume full responsibility before making any investment decisions.

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