The Universal Proof Market: A Critical Ingredient for the ZK Endgame

The Pursuit of Efficiency

The fundamental goal of an optimized economic system is to create more while spending less. This applies to economies, companies, and computation. The world is always seeking tools that achieve more with fewer resources. Zero-knowledge proofs are perhaps the most powerful embodiment of this principle.

To illustrate the power of ZK, consider two worlds:

• World 1: A million people each perform one hour of work to keep a system running.
• World 2: One person does two hours of work, while the remaining million people do just a fraction of a second of work.

While the single worker in World 2 takes on extra responsibility, the overall efficiency of the system is significantly higher. This is what ZK enables: reducing the burden on the many and onto a select prover, optimizing computational efficiency at a global scale.

Clearly, ZK has the potential to make systems faster, cheaper, and better. But what does it take for ZK to achieve global adoption? It comes down to solving two key hurdles: adoption hurdles and execution hurdles.

Overcoming ZK’s Hurdles

1. The Adoption Hurdle

The onboarding challenge stems from the fact that proof systems operate on mathematical principles that are foreign to most developers. 

For example, proof systems function using polynomials over finite fields, whereas developers typically work with high-level programming languages.

The first attempt to bridge this gap was domain-specific languages (DSLs) like Circom and Noir, which required developers to learn a new way of writing logic. While effective, this posed a steep learning curve.

The next evolution has been zkVMs, which allow developers to write business logic in familiar languages like Rust and have that code automatically transformed into a format suitable for proof generation. Finally, zkVMs have significantly lowered the barrier to entry for ZK adoption.

Despite this, execution is still a pain.

2. The Execution Hurdle

Once a system is built using ZK, the primary challenge shifts to reducing proving time and cost.

• Proving cost is the expense associated with generating ZK proofs .
• Proving time refers to the speed at which proofs are generated and verified.

While one way to reduce proving cost and time is by continually improving proof generation algorithms and developing hardware-accelerated implementations, hardware optimizations can quickly become obsolete as algorithmic advancements continue to evolve. Instead, we must focus on where inefficiencies arise in existing systems.

Where Proving Time and Cost Bleed

• Cost bleeding occurs due to the suboptimal utilization of hardware. This stems from misallocation of resources. 
• Time bleeding occurs due to poor parallelization, slow setup times, and naive orchestration that does not account for the unique properties of proving workloads.

The solution to these inefficiencies lies in a universal proof market.

The Universal Proof Market

A universal proof market optimizes the proving process by ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently across proof requests. It provides three primary benefits:

(a) Lower Proving Costs

By maximizing machine utilization, the universal proof market ensures that hardware is never idle. This is achieved through intelligent orchestration that understands the nature of proving tasks and efficiently assigns them to available compute resources.

(b) High Proving Speed

The system juices parallelism to the maximum extent possible, distributing proving workloads across multiple machines. Smart memory management ensures low communication latency, further improving throughput.

(c) Hassle-Free Proving

Instead of managing complex proving infrastructure, teams can simply submit a proving task and quickly receive results. This allows developers to focus on their core business instead of worrying about proving infrastructure.

Decentralization naturally emerges as a consequence of achieving these goals, but it is not a prerequisite for adopting a proof market. Even projects that do not require decentralization can benefit from the efficiency gains of a universal proof market.

The Universal Proof Market in Action: Fermah 🤝 ZKsync 

Fermah is a universal proof market that has combined intelligent orchestration tools and lean mechanism design to enable cheap and fast proving.

I was often asked, “Who would pay for a universal proof market?” This was a natural question in the nascent stages of the category in 2024, especially since there were no paying customers at that time.

However, this is no longer the case.

At Fermah, we’re working with zkSync, the largest proof producer in crypto today. 

This collaboration illustrates that universal proof markets are no longer a pipedream. They are a crucial component of the ZK stack. 

Join the Fermah Testnet 

The future of ZK is not just about better proof systems – it’s about unlocking global efficiency at scale.

We invite developers, researchers, and builders to join us in shaping this future. Fermah’s universal proof market testnet will soon be live, and we welcome all teams to explore how they can leverage its power. Our team is here to support you every step of the way. 

Sign up, integrate, and help shape the future of ZK today!