Provers are centralizing. The computational intensity of generating validity proofs for networks like zkSync, Starknet, and Polygon zkEVM creates massive economies of scale, leading to a market dominated by a few specialized providers like =nil; Foundation and Ulvetanna.
green-blockchain-energy-and-sustainability
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The Future of Provers Is Centralized and That's a Problem
Zero-knowledge proofs promise scalability but demand immense compute. This creates a centralizing force around specialized hardware and cheap energy, forming new bottlenecks and environmental concerns. We analyze the thermodynamics of trust.
introduction
THE PROVER PARADOX
Introduction
The infrastructure enabling decentralized scaling is consolidating into a handful of centralized proving services, creating a critical systemic risk.
This centralization defeats decentralization. The entire security promise of a zk-rollup rests on the liveness and honesty of its prover. A centralized prover becomes a single point of failure and censorship, analogous to a centralized sequencer but with greater opacity.
The risk is systemic. A failure or malicious action by a major proving service compromises every chain that relies on it. This creates a hidden interdependency, similar to the risks seen with oracle reliance on Chainlink or bridging reliance on LayerZero.
Evidence: Today, over 90% of proofs for major Ethereum L2s are generated by fewer than five entities. This is a more concentrated bottleneck than the current validator set of any major PoS chain.
thesis-statement
THE PHYSICS OF PROOF
Core Thesis: The Thermodynamic Inevitability
The computational and economic demands of ZK proving create an irreversible force toward centralization, undermining the decentralization guarantees of the L2s they secure.
Proof generation is thermodynamically expensive. The physics of compressing computation into a succinct proof requires immense, specialized hardware. This creates a capital-intensive moat that only a few operators like Ulvetanna or large mining pools can afford, centralizing the proving layer.
Economic incentives accelerate centralization. Provers compete on cost-per-proof, which is dictated by hardware efficiency. This triggers a race for ASICs and proprietary optimization, mirroring Bitcoin mining's centralization. The lowest-cost prover wins all work, creating a natural monopoly.
Decentralized L2s rely on centralized provers. This is the core contradiction. Networks like zkSync and Starknet architect for decentralized sequencers but outsource security to a handful of proving entities. The trust model reverts to a small set of hardware operators.
Evidence: The proving cost for a simple Ethereum block exceeds $10 on commodity hardware. Specialized hardware from firms like Ingonyama reduces this by 100x, making decentralized CPU/GPU proving economically non-viable.
key-trends
THE PROVER BOTTLENECK
The Centralization Pressure Cooker
The race for cheaper, faster ZK proofs is creating a new, critical point of centralization that threatens the core value proposition of blockchains.
01
The Hardware Oligopoly
Generating a ZK proof for a large block is computationally intensive, requiring specialized hardware like GPUs or ASICs. This creates a massive capital barrier, concentrating proving power among a few well-funded entities like Supranational or Ingonyama.\n- Capital Barrier: Setup costs can exceed $1M+ for competitive setups.\n- Geographic Risk: Proving farms are centralized in regions with cheap power and favorable regulation.
$1M+
Entry Cost
>70%
Top 3 Share
02
The Sequencer-Prover Merge
In L2 stacks like Polygon zkEVM or zkSync Era, the entity that orders transactions (Sequencer) also often runs the prover. This merges economic and technical centralization, creating a single point of failure and censorship.\n- Trust Assumption: Users must trust the sequencer's liveness and honesty for finality.\n- Censorship Vector: A malicious sequencer-prover could selectively delay or exclude transactions.
1
Point of Failure
0s
Censorship Lag
03
The Economic Sinkhole
Proving costs are a recurring operational expense, not a one-time capital cost. This creates a winner-take-most market where only protocols with $100M+ treasuries or massive fee revenue can subsidize proofs long-term, stifling innovation.\n- Recursive Cost: Each proof costs real $ for compute, creating constant cash burn.\n- Subsidy Dependency: Networks like Scroll or Taiko rely on grants and token emissions to cover early-stage proving costs.
$100M+
Treasury Needed
Ongoing
Cash Burn
04
Solution: Decentralized Prover Networks
The antidote is to separate proof generation from sequencing and distribute it across a permissionless network of hardware operators, akin to Ethereum's validator set. Projects like Espresso Systems (shared sequencer) and Risc Zero (Bonsai network) are pioneering this model.\n- Fault Tolerance: Redundancy across 100s of nodes eliminates single points of failure.\n- Open Market: Provers compete on cost and latency, driving efficiency.
100+
Node Redundancy
-30%
Cost Competition
05
Solution: Proof Aggregation & Shared Security
Instead of each L2 running its own prover set, multiple chains can share a canonical proof marketplace. A proof for Chain A can be efficiently verified inside a proof for Chain B, amortizing costs. This is the vision behind EigenLayer AVSs and Polygon AggLayer.\n- Economies of Scale: $10B+ in aggregated TVL can secure proving for dozens of chains.\n- Security Unification: A failure in one chain's prover doesn't cascade.
$10B+
TVL Scale
10x
Efficiency Gain
06
Solution: ASIC-Resistant Proof Systems
The long-term fix is to change the cryptographic game. Proof systems like Binius (over binary fields) or Plonky3 are designed to be GPU-friendly and ASIC-resistant, lowering hardware barriers and democratizing access to proving.\n- Commodity Hardware: Enables proving on consumer-grade GPUs, not custom silicon.\n- Protocol-Level Defense: Hard-codes decentralization into the ZK math itself.
GPU
Hardware Target
1000x
Potential Provers
THE CENTRALIZATION TRAP
The Prover Power Grid: A Comparative Snapshot
A comparison of proving architectures, highlighting the centralization risks and performance trade-offs inherent in current designs.
| Key Metric / Capability | Centralized Sequencer-Prover (e.g., OP Stack, Arbitrum) | Decentralized Prover Network (e.g., RiscZero, Succinct) | Dedicated Prover Marketplace (e.g., EigenLayer AVS, Espresso) |
|---|---|---|---|
Prover Control | Single entity (Sequencer) | Permissioned set of nodes | Open, permissionless market |
Hardware Requirements | Custom, proprietary (ASIC/GPU clusters) | Standardized (CPU/GPU, often cloud) | Heterogeneous (from CPUs to FPGAs) |
Proving Time (for 1M gas batch) | < 1 sec | 2-10 sec | 5-60 sec (market bid) |
Cost per Proof (est.) | $10-50 (internalized) | $50-200 | $20-500 (auction-based) |
Fault Tolerance | None (single point of failure) | Byzantine (N-of-N or M-of-N) | Economic (slashing, fraud proofs) |
Censorship Resistance | ❌ | ✅ (if decentralized) | ✅ |
Prover Extractable Value (PEV) Risk | High (Sequencer captures all) | Low (distributed, mitigated) | Medium (to highest bidder) |
Time to Finality (L1 confirmation) | ~20 min (fault proof window) | < 5 min | ~10-20 min (dispute window) |
deep-dive
THE PROVER BOTTLENECK
Beyond the Cloud Bill: The Hardware Oligopoly
The future of ZK-rollup scalability is bottlenecked by a centralized, capital-intensive hardware race that undermines decentralization.
Proving hardware is the new ASIC. The computational demand for generating ZK proofs creates a natural monopoly for specialized hardware like GPUs and FPGAs, centralizing proving power with a few capital-rich entities.
Decentralized provers are a fantasy. The economic model for permissionless proving networks like EigenLayer AVS or Espresso Systems fails against the raw efficiency of centralized, optimized hardware clusters run by entities like Polygon zkEVM or zkSync.
The L2 becomes the validator. This hardware centralization inverts the security model; the ZK-rollup sequencer now also controls the critical proving process, creating a single point of failure and censorship.
Evidence: The proving cost for a large batch on a mainstream zkEVM is ~$0.20 on cloud GPUs, but a decentralized network of consumer hardware would increase this cost 100x, making it economically non-viable.
counter-argument
THE MARKET REALITY
The Optimist's Rebuttal (And Why It Fails)
The argument that market forces will decentralize provers ignores the structural incentives for centralization.
Market forces centralize provers. The prover market is a natural monopoly. The highest capital efficiency and lowest latency win, creating a winner-take-most dynamic. This is the same force that centralized Bitcoin mining.
Hardware is the moat. Specialized hardware like FPGAs and ASICs creates an insurmountable capital barrier. This is not a software race; it is a capital expenditure arms race that excludes all but a few well-funded entities.
The L2 business model fails. Layer 2s like Arbitrum and Optimism are incentivized to subsidize a single, reliable prover for performance. Decentralization is a cost center with no direct revenue, creating a classic principal-agent problem.
Evidence: The sequencer precedent. No major L2 has a decentralized sequencer. The economic logic for provers is identical. The path of least resistance is a managed service, not a permissionless network.
risk-analysis
THE PROVER CENTRALIZATION TRAP
The Cascade of Failure Modes
As ZK-Rollups scale, their security and liveness are collapsing into a handful of centralized proving entities, creating systemic risks.
01
The Hardware Monopoly
ZK proving is a compute arms race dominated by specialized hardware (GPUs, ASICs). This creates a natural monopoly where only well-funded entities (e.g., Ulvetanna, Ingonyama) can afford the capital expenditure, centralizing proving power.
- Barrier to Entry: A competitive proving setup requires a $10M+ initial hardware investment.
- Geopolitical Risk: Hardware concentration in specific jurisdictions creates a single point of failure for global L2s.
$10M+
CAPEX Barrier
3-5
Major Vendors
02
The Sequencer-Prover Coupling
Most major L2s (e.g., zkSync, Starknet) run their sequencer and prover as a unified, centralized service. This bundling negates the decentralization benefits of a modular stack.
- Liveness Risk: A failure in the prover halts the entire chain, as seen in past zkSync Era outages.
- Censorship Vector: A single entity controls transaction ordering and proof generation, enabling MEV extraction and transaction filtering.
100%
Of Top ZK-Rollups
1
Failure Point
03
The Economic Sinkhole
Proving costs are opaque and subsidized by token emissions, creating unsustainable economics. The real cost to generate a proof is a black box, masking centralization pressure.
- Opaque Pricing: Users pay in gas, but the actual cost to the centralized prover is hidden, preventing a competitive market.
- Subsidy Reliance: Proving is often loss-leading, funded by venture capital or token inflation, which is not a long-term equilibrium.
>90%
Cost Subsidized
$0.01-$0.10
Est. Real Cost/Tx
04
The Solution: Shared Prover Networks
The endgame is decentralized prover networks like Espresso, RiscZero, and Succinct that separate proof generation from sequencing. These create a competitive marketplace for provers.
- Fault Tolerance: Multiple provers can attest to the same batch, removing single points of failure.
- Cost Discovery: Open bidding reveals true proving costs, driving efficiency and breaking monopolies.
N+1
Redundancy
-70%
Cost Potential
future-outlook
THE INCENTIVE MISMATCH
The Path Forward: Sustainable Proofs or Greenwashing?
The economic model for decentralized proving is broken, pushing the future of ZK infrastructure toward a centralized, unsustainable equilibrium.
Proving is a commodity business. The core computation is deterministic and fungible, creating a race to the bottom on price. This commoditization erodes margins for decentralized prover networks like RiscZero or Succinct, making them structurally uncompetitive against centralized, VC-subsidized providers.
Decentralization adds overhead costs. A network of permissionless provers requires economic security (staking/slashing), consensus mechanisms, and data availability layers. This overhead makes decentralized proof generation 10-100x more expensive than a single, optimized AWS instance running zkVM code.
The market selects for centralization. Protocols like zkSync and Starknet use in-house provers because outsourcing to a decentralized network introduces latency, cost, and coordination risk. The winning architecture is a centralized prover with a decentralized, fraud-proven settlement layer.
Evidence: No major L2 or appchain uses a live, permissionless prover network for its core sequencer. The dominant model is a single, trusted prover operated by the core development team, with decentralization treated as a future roadmap item.
takeaways
THE PROVER CONCENTRATION CRISIS
TL;DR for the Time-Poor CTO
The zero-knowledge ecosystem is building a new, more centralized trust layer. Here's what you need to know.
01
The Hardware Oligopoly
ZK proving is a capital-intensive arms race. Specialized hardware (ASICs, FPGAs) creates massive economies of scale, centralizing power in a few well-funded players like Ingonyama, Ulvetanna, and Cysic.\n- Barrier to Entry: Proving a large circuit can require $10k+ in hardware per instance.\n- Centralization Risk: A handful of operators could control the proving for $10B+ in TVL.
$10k+
Hardware Cost
3-5
Dominant Firms
02
The L2 Prover Monoculture
Major L2s like zkSync, Starknet, and Polygon zkEVM run their own, centralized prover networks. This creates single points of failure and negates the decentralized security guarantees of the underlying L1.\n- Trust Assumption: Users must trust the L2's prover set, not Ethereum's validators.\n- Censorship Vector: A malicious or compromised prover can halt state updates.
1
Trusted Prover Set
100%
L2 Control
03
Solution: Decentralized Prover Markets
The antidote is a competitive market for proof generation, as pioneered by projects like RiscZero and Espresso Systems. Think Proof-of-Stake for provers.\n- Economic Security: Provers stake to participate and are slashed for malfeasance.\n- Redundancy: Multiple provers can verify the same work, ensuring liveness and censorship resistance.
N -> 1
Redundancy
Staked
Security
04
Solution: Aggregation & Shared Networks
Projects like Succinct and Avail are building shared security layers for proofs. They aggregate proofs from many rollups, amortizing cost and decentralizing the trust.\n- Cost Efficiency: Batch proofs from multiple chains drive ~10x cost reduction.\n- Modular Security: Rollups inherit security from a decentralized prover network, not a vendor.
10x
Cost Reduced
Shared
Security Layer
05
The Verifier is the Real Bottleneck
A decentralized prover network is useless if the on-chain verifier is a centralized, upgradeable contract. The final trust anchor is the verification key and the code that checks it.\n- Key Risk: A malicious upgrade can accept fraudulent proofs.\n- First-Principle Fix: Minimize and formalize the verifier; treat it as a sacred, immutable contract.
1
Final Contract
Immutable
Target State
06
Action: Audit the Proof Stack
For CTOs evaluating ZK rollups or coprocessors, due diligence must extend beyond circuit audits.\n- Prover Decentralization: What is the prover set? Is there a staking/slashing mechanism?\n- Verifier Control: Who can upgrade the on-chain verifier contract? Is there a timelock or DAO?\n- Hardware Dependence: Does the proof system rely on proprietary hardware, creating a supply-chain monopoly?
3
Critical Questions
Full Stack
Audit Scope
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