ZKsync launched Airbender Prime, achieving real-time proof of Ethereum with a single GPU

Ethereum Layer 2 network ZKsync announced the launch of the prover Airbender Prime. ZKsync stated that, to their knowledge, this is the first prover to demonstrate real-time proofs of Ethereum on a single GPU. Airbender Prime is designed for post-quantum security, utilizing hash-based STARK, combined with GKR sumcheck, WHIR polynomial commitment, and BLAKE2s hash; its L1 proof will use a commitment based on Keccak-256 instead of BN254 pairing. This prover is based on the open RISC-V standard and combines real-time proofs with independent validators.

In a single GPU evaluation, an NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell completed proofs for 99% of 7200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks, with each block taking less than 10 seconds, including witness preparation; all blocks were completed within 12 seconds. ZKsync claims that Airbender Prime leads in average proof time, GPU efficiency, and cost reported on the ETHproofs public leaderboard, and it already has dual GPU and quad GPU real-time configurations while reducing the hardware requirements for generating proofs.