Can the Pertra upgrade catalyze a ZK Prover network with tens of billions of FDVs?

Author: NingNing, Source: Author Twitter @0xNing0x

Pectra upgrade is a bigger milestone than Ethereum Cancun upgrade. According to the upgrade content determined by the current Ethereum developer meeting, the next Pectra upgrade of Ethereum mainnet will greatly accelerate the modularization process of Ethereum.

Pertra upgrade will directly benefit projects in tracks such as modularization, chain abstraction and ZK Prover network. We will not go into details about modularization and chain abstraction. Today we will focus on ZK Prover network.

ZK technology, like blockchain technology, is a "machine for creating trust". The difference is that they are implemented in different ways. Blockchain achieves trust by relying on a distributed ledger system with a consensus mechanism. ZK uses complex cryptographic engineering to achieve trust.

The implementation mechanism of blockchain makes blockchain exist in an "impossible triangle", and the resources on the chain are scarce and precious, which limits the scalability of blockchain. Therefore, there are two major trends in the current blockchain to improve scalability. One is modularization to let light nodes be responsible for block verification, and the other is to transfer trust calculation to the off-chain and use ZK to implement it.

Currently, the main application scenarios of ZK are: data availability verification of ZK Rollup, ZK cross-chain bridge relay layer, computational integrity proof of zkML, and price information verification of ZK oracle.

In addition, the Verkel tree transformation upgraded by Pectra will introduce the ZK technology of KZG commitment to help realize the statelessness of Ethereum mainnet.

Although ZK technology is powerful, there are currently problems such as long ZKP generation time and Prover centralization.

Therefore, hardware acceleration and decentralized Prover network generated by ZKP have become a new hot track in the ZK field after ZK Rollup in the primary market.

Recently, Succinct @SuccinctLabs and Cysic @cysic_xyz in this track have completed a financing of $55M and $12M respectively.

Take Cysic @cysic_xyz as an example. The team has the ability to design ZK hardware acceleration chips, and on this basis, the ZK proof layer Cysic Network is recommended.

The Cysic Network stack consists of three parts: the settlement layer, the computing layer, and the Agent layer.

The settlement layer consists of two parts: the VC (Verification Committee) and the sequencer network. VC is responsible for checking the validity of the proof generated by the Prover of the computing layer. The sequencer network is responsible for executing and updating state data.

The computing layer is a permissionless Prover hardware network that people can join using GPUs or Cysic's Asic hardware.

The Agent layer is a ZK task market consisting of projects such as ZK Rollup, ZK cross-chain bridge, zkML, and ZK oracle.

The workflow of Cysic Network is very simple, with the Agent layer project issuing ZK proof tasks, the computing layer generating ZKP proofs, and the settlement layer verifying ZKP proofs.

Since the ZKP generation service market is still in its early stages, the revenue generated cannot cover the hardware depreciation, electricity costs, operation and maintenance costs of Prover, so the ZK Prover network needs to raise funds from the market by issuing coins, and then reward the tokens to the Prover nodes through PoW to promote the adoption of the ZKP Prover network.

Finally, as the Cancun upgrade catalyzed a batch of L2 with billions to tens of billions of FDV, the Pertra upgrade will also catalyze a batch of ZK Prover networks with billions to tens of billions of FDV.