Moore’s Law states that technology doubles in performance roughly every two years.
But today, the pace of Ethereum’s ZK technology seems to be outpacing even that.
Achieving L1 scalability of several thousand TPS may no longer be a distant dream.
Today, Brevis announced Pico Prism, a cutting-edge zkVM for real-time Ethereum proving.
Pico Prism currently generates proofs for live Ethereum blocks in an average of 6.9 seconds using 64 RTX 5090 GPUs, and can prove 99.6% of blocks within 12 seconds.
Back in May, Succinct unveiled Hypercube, which managed to prove 94% of Ethereum blocks within 12 seconds using 160 RTX 4090 GPUs.
In just five months, the industry has achieved higher speed at roughly half the cost — an astonishing leap forward.
⚡ Why “12 Seconds” Matters
Why is it so important to generate ZK proofs within 12 seconds?
Because Ethereum ultimately aims to transition fully to ZK-based verification, enabling thousands of TPS directly on L1.
Here’s how it works:
All L1s consist of multiple nodes that re-execute every block’s transactions for verification. This re-execution is computationally heavy — for instance, becoming a validator on Hyperliquid requires a 32-core CPU and 128GB of RAM.
Ethereum identifies this as a scalability bottleneck and envisions a future where “you can run an Ethereum node on a smartwatch.”
The roadmap replaces re-execution with ZK verification: someone generates a ZK proof alongside the block to attest that it was executed correctly, and other nodes verify that proof instead of re-running all transactions.
Since verifying a proof is far cheaper than re-executing a block, even lightweight devices — smartphones, watches — could securely validate Ethereum blocks
as long as they have sufficient network bandwidth.
That’s why real-time proof generation is so critical.
Proofs must be generated within each 12-second block interval and propagated to validators in time.
As a result, a key milestone for zkVMs is whether they can prove an Ethereum block in under 12 seconds.
🧩 The Path Ahead: EIP-7825, 7823 & 7883
This future may arrive sooner than expected.
In the upcoming Fusaka upgrade (December), Ethereum will introduce two EIPs that make real-time proving even more practical:
1️⃣ EIP-7825
This proposal limits the max transaction gas to 16.7M, roughly 1/3 of the block gas limit.
While the main goal is to prevent oversized transactions and improve network stability, it also helps zkVMs parallelize block proofs by splitting blocks into smaller chunks.
2️⃣ EIP-7823 & EIP-7883
These proposals cap the maximum gas usage of the MODEXP precompile and raise its gas cost.
Though not directly aimed at zkVMs, they help mitigate the long proof times caused by MODEXP, thereby improving worst-case proving performance.
🔮 Looking Forward
As @drakefjustin noted on X, by the end of this year, it may be possible to prove all Ethereum blocks at home using just 16 GPUs.
Progress toward real-time proving for Ethereum L1 is nothing short of extraordinary.
In May, SP1 Hypercube proved 94% of L1 blocks in under 12 seconds using 160 RTX 4090s. Five months later Pico Prism proves 99.9% of the same blocks in under 12 seconds, with just 64 RTX 5090s. Average proving latency is now 6.9 seconds.
Performance has outpaced Moore's law ever since Zcash pioneered practical SNARKs a decade ago. Today's Pico Prism results are a striking reminder of that exponential curve.
Beyond performance, zkVM diversity is remarkable. At least nine zkVMs are racing toward real-time proving: Airbender, Ceno, Jolt, OpenVM, Pico Prism, R0VM, SP1 Hypercube, Ziren, ZisK. That diversity is strength, similar to CL and EL client diversity.
Fusaka, expected in December, will simplify real-time proving. EIP-7825 caps per-tx gas usage, enabling more parallel proving via subblocks. MODEXP, a prominent "prover killer", is being repriced with EIP-7823 and EIP-7883.
By year's end several teams will prove every L1 EVM block on a 16-GPU cluster, drawing less than 10kW total. The 10kW target—about the same as a Tesla home charger—matters for on-prem proving in garages and offices, eliminating reliance on cloud proving.
gigagas frontier
L1 throughput has grown 100x since genesis ten years ago, from 20 kilogas/sec to 2 megagas/sec. With zkEVMs we can 100x again, in half the time. The key is to bypass validators as Ethereum's current scalability bottleneck.
Lean execution proofs also decentralise validation. Goodbye 4TB NVMe, 8 cores, 64GB RAM recommended by EIP-7870. A Raspberry Pi running statelessly, or even a phone, will soon suffice. The scalability vs decentralisation dilemma is dying.
Zooming out, the lean Ethereum vision is gigagas L1 and teragas L2. Gigagas L1 (10K TPS) means high-value payments, trading, and social apps directly on mainnet. Teragas L2 (10M TPS) means welcoming the entirety of finance onto Ethereum.
Nov 22: Ethproofs day demo
Behind the scenes teams are preparing a special Devconnect demo. In 38 days my home validator will run on zkEVM proofs. My mighty Geth node will go dark—no more execution client.
Devconnect Argentina is Ethereum's world fair. World fairs unveiled the lightbulb, running water, cars, refrigeration, phones, escalators. Real-time proving is Ethereum's lightbulb moment.
Ethereum's future is bright. Believe in something :)
Whether that vision comes true remains to be seen. but one thing’s clear: ZK proving is accelerating faster than Moore’s Law ever imagined.
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