We are changing up the format of this newsletter. Going forward we will be sharing more details about the latest episode and some of our own thoughts and takeaways. We’re also running a poll this week on where to host the next zkSummit—cast your vote below and help us choose the next city!
In our most recent episode of the Zero Knowledge Podcast, we spoke with guest Justin Drake about the Ethproofs initiative. Throughout the episode, we kept circling around one question—what is Ethproofs, really? Is it a meme (as Justin first describes it), a loose online community of zkVM teams, or the beginning of a new subculture/tribe, reminiscent of Flashbots circa 2023?
What we do know: Ethproofs is an initiative managed by a new working group within the Ethereum Foundation, with the meta-goal of aligning the previously divergent zkVM innovation toward accelerating zk proving speed on Ethereum. They have been hosting a series of community calls, maintain a growing TG chat, and run a website that showcases different zkVM projects and how they stack up against a set of performance benchmarks.
Past benchmarking “battles” between zkVM teams got pretty nasty online. Many teams publicly compared themselves to competitors using performance results captured on specialized hardware setups optimized for their own systems. The marketing announcements for these results often failed to mention the limits of the testing setups and the tradeoffs involved. This led to a lot of hurt feelings, frustration at the unfairness of the practice, and teams constantly calling “bullshit” on one another.
With the rise of Ethproofs, there are finally some fixed “rules to the game” within which teams can more accurately compare themselves. And this framework seems to be creating a stronger spirit of collaboration among them—at least so far. Our hope is that this coordination will drive new innovation not just for Ethereum, but for the entire zk ecosystem. And if Ethproofs follows the trajectory of one of its inspirations, L2Beat, it could spark the same influx of new talent and creative energy into the space.
Some takeaways from our conversation with Justin:
zkVM teams seem to be rallying around RISC-V ISA and GPU acceleration—at least for now.
The Ethproofs zkVM benchmark categories and targets are being set by the EF, with the goal of driving performance (and value) to Ethereum and the EVM.
Justin hopes zkVM teams will collaborate the way client teams did for ETH2.0.
While collaboration is the focus right now, there may eventually be a “winner,” or a system that will be enshrined in Ethereum L1—even as the EF develops its own spec in parallel.
Future benchmarks may include privacy and client-side proving, though that’s still in progress.
Justin makes some exciting (and bold!) claims about Nvidia potentially building ZPUs, or zk-specific GPUs, in the future!
The EF will be offering a $1M reward for proving the "correlated agreement conjecture"—something the zk community has been buzzing about since the announcement on our show!
And the current zkVM tally (per Justin): 32 projects. Wild!
All in all, it was great to catch up with Justin to finally cover the Ethproofs project and hear his enthusiasm and hopes for the future of zk. We’re excited to see what comes out of the initiative!
Find the full episode page here or follow the thread for commentary about this episode.
Talk soon,
Anna
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Ecosystem Poll
We recently asked the community where they’d like us to host the next zkSummit—zk14. It’s planned for Spring/Summer 2026 in Europe. We’re looking for a city that’s well connected internationally, affordable, and well-suited for events. Below is the shortlist of the most requested cities so far.
If you have another suggestion that is not on the list, do join in the conversation in this post.