Why the Current ZK Proof System Landscape Is Unsustainable for CTOs

ZK Tooling Fragmentation creates vendor lock-in and cripples developer velocity. Teams must choose between Starknet's Cairo, zkSync's zkEVM, or Polygon zkEVM, each with unique proving backends and incompatible toolchains. This siloed ecosystem forces costly, non-portable specialization.

Proving Infrastructure Sprawl is a hidden tax. Managing dedicated provers for zkRollups, privacy apps like Aztec, and identity proofs requires separate infrastructure stacks. This operational burden distracts from core product development and scales poorly with user growth.

Proof Market Immaturity fails to deliver on the promise of commoditized computation. While projects like Risc Zero and Succinct offer generalized provers, they lack the liquidity and standardization seen in mature compute markets like AWS or data markets like The Graph.

Evidence: A typical L2 team now spends over 30% of its engineering budget on proof system integration and optimization, a cost that does not scale down with transaction volume.

Vendor lock-in is the default. Choosing a ZK stack like Starknet's Cairo or zkSync's Boojum commits you to a specific proving network, language, and toolchain. This creates a hard fork scenario for future upgrades, as seen in Polygon's migration from Plonky2 to Plonky3.

Proving hardware is not commoditized. Performance and cost depend on the specific proof system's arithmetization. A circuit optimized for RISC Zero's zkVM runs poorly on a Succinct SP1 prover, forcing CTOs to bet on which hardware roadmap (GPU, FPGA, ASIC) will win.

Interoperability is a postscript. Bridging proofs between ecosystems like Aztec's private rollup and a public Arbitrum Nova chain requires custom, fragile relayers. The promised shared prover networks from Risc0 and Succinct remain unproven at scale.

Evidence: The median lifespan of a production ZK proof system is 18 months before a major breaking change, based on the upgrade cycles of Scroll, Polygon zkEVM, and Linea.

ZK proof system fragmentation forces CTOs to manage multiple, incompatible proving backends. A Starknet app uses Cairo, a zkSync app uses Boojum, and a Polygon zkEVM app uses Plonky2. Each system has unique toolchains, security assumptions, and vendor lock-in, creating a maintenance nightmare.

Specialization destroys composability across the modular stack. A proof generated for an Aztec private rollup is useless for a Scroll validity rollup. This Balkanization contradicts the core promise of a unified, interoperable blockchain ecosystem, forcing teams to rebuild logic for each environment.

The operational overhead is multiplicative, not additive. Supporting StarkEx for an exchange and RISC Zero for a coprocessor requires separate teams, audits, and infrastructure. This siloed expertise is a massive resource drain that scales poorly with application complexity.

Evidence: The Ethereum ecosystem now has over 10 major, incompatible ZK proving systems (Halo2, Plonky2, Boojum, Cairo, etc.). No single team can maintain expertise in all of them, forcing risky bets on specific vendors and creating systemic fragility.

The pro-innovation argument is flawed. It assumes that a fragmented landscape of competing proof systems like zk-SNARKs (Groth16, Plonk) and zk-STARKs drives progress. In reality, it creates vendor lock-in and technical debt. Your application's logic becomes permanently coupled to a specific proving stack.

You are not choosing a proof system; you are choosing a full-stack vendor. Selecting a ZK-EVM (zkSync Era, Polygon zkEVM, Scroll) dictates your compiler, prover network, and data availability layer. This is the opposite of the modular, interoperable future promised by Ethereum's roadmap.

The operational overhead is unsustainable. Each system has unique trusted setups, hardware requirements (GPU/FPGA), and audit surfaces. Managing this for multiple chains or applications multiplies your team's cognitive load and security review cycles.

Evidence: The Ethereum Foundation's PSE team and Polygon are now collaborating on a universal zkEVM standard. This is a market signal that the current fragmentation is a bug, not a feature, for long-term adoption.

Fragmented tooling creates vendor lock-in. Each major ZK L2—zkSync Era, Starknet, Polygon zkEVM—operates a unique proving stack. Integrating with each chain requires dedicated engineering teams to master disparate circuit languages and proving backends, multiplying development and audit costs.

The real cost is operational complexity. A CTO must manage separate proving infrastructure, security assumptions, and upgrade cycles for every chain they deploy on. This is the ZK equivalent of the early EVM bridge wars, where projects like Across and LayerZero competed on bespoke security models before standards emerged.

Proof aggregation is the emerging bottleneck. Without a standard proof format, proof recursion and aggregation across chains are impossible. This forces applications to verify proofs on each destination chain individually, exploding gas costs and latency, unlike the batched efficiency of Optimism's fault proofs.

Evidence: The Ethereum Foundation's PSE team is pushing for standardized ZK primitives because the current landscape requires 3x the engineering headcount for multi-chain deployment compared to a homogeneous EVM environment.