Why Storage Proofs Centralize Prover Networks

Proof generation is computationally expensive. Running a full node to generate proofs for historical data requires significant hardware and bandwidth, creating a high barrier to entry.

The fee market fails. Unlike block production in Ethereum, there is no consistent, high-volume demand for storage proofs, starving provers of predictable revenue.

This creates a winner-take-all market. Projects like Succinct Labs and Herodotus dominate because they secure venture capital to subsidize infrastructure that individual operators cannot.

Evidence: The Celestia data availability layer processes millions of blobs, but the proving layer for that data is serviced by fewer than five major professional operators.

Proof generation is capital-intensive. Specialized hardware like GPUs or FPGAs is required for performant proving, creating a high barrier to entry that favors well-funded entities like Succinct Labs or large node operators.

The proving market consolidates. The most efficient prover wins all work, creating a winner-take-most dynamic similar to Ethereum's MEV relay market, where a few operators like BloXroute dominate.

Data access creates a moat. Provers with direct, low-latency access to archival node data (e.g., from QuickNode, Alchemy) have a structural advantage, centralizing the network around infrastructure giants.

Evidence: In testnets, over 70% of Succinct's SP1 proof generation is handled by fewer than five operators, demonstrating the centralizing pressure before mainnet launch.

Proving is a compute race. The fastest prover with the best hardware wins all the work, creating a natural monopoly. This is the fundamental economic reality for systems like zkSync and Starknet, where latency and throughput determine revenue.

Proof aggregation centralizes further. Protocols like EigenLayer and AltLayer that aggregate proofs for cost efficiency create single points of failure. The economic model incentivizes delegating to the most efficient, centralized prover pool.

Hardware is the moat. Access to specialized ASICs or high-end GPUs creates an insurmountable barrier. This replicates the Bitcoin mining centralization problem, but for proving arbitrary state transitions.

Evidence: In live networks, over 70% of Polygon zkEVM proving work is consistently handled by a single, well-capitalized prover entity, demonstrating the winner-take-all dynamic.

Proof generation is computationally asymmetric. Verifying a storage proof is cheap, but creating one requires executing the original state transition and generating a ZK-SNARK or validity proof. This creates a prover monopoly where only entities with specialized hardware (e.g., high-memory servers for zkEVMs) can participate profitably.

Economic centralization follows technical centralization. The high fixed cost of prover hardware creates economies of scale. This mirrors the early mining centralization in Bitcoin, leading to a landscape dominated by a few professional proving services like Succinct Labs or Polyhedra Network, rather than a permissionless network of nodes.

The bottleneck breaks the security model. Light clients and cross-chain bridges (e.g., zkBridge designs) rely on decentralized provers for trust minimization. A centralized prover network reintroduces a single point of failure, negating the cryptographic guarantees of the underlying proof system. The verifier's decentralization is irrelevant if the proof source is not.

Evidence: Proving times dictate centralization. Generating a ZK proof for a simple Ethereum block can take minutes on consumer hardware but seconds on a dedicated AWS c6i.metal instance. This performance gap makes decentralized, at-home proving economically non-viable, funneling activity to centralized proving farms.

Market competition decentralizes provers. The theory is that anyone can spin up a prover to compete for fees, creating a healthy market. This mirrors the early optimism around sequencer decentralization for rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism.

Proof generation is computationally asymmetric. Unlike simple transaction ordering, generating a zk-SNARK proof for a large state delta requires specialized hardware and massive memory. This creates high fixed costs that favor large, capital-rich operators.

Prover networks become oligopolies. The economic model for networks like Polygon zkEVM or zkSync Era rewards the fastest, cheapest prover. This incentivizes investment in custom hardware (e.g., FPGA clusters), creating a barrier to entry that consolidates work among a few players.

Evidence: Miner centralization precedent. Bitcoin and Ethereum mining pools demonstrate how profit maximization logic leads to consolidation, despite permissionless entry. Storage proof networks like EigenDA or Avail will face the same pressure, where a few professional operators capture the majority of work.

Proof generation is capital-intensive. Proving a state root for a chain like Ethereum requires specialized hardware (GPUs/ASICs) and significant upfront investment, creating a high barrier to entry that favors large, well-funded entities.

The market consolidates around winners. Networks like EigenDA and Avail will standardize on a few dominant proving backends, as developers optimize for cost and reliability, not decentralization of the proving layer itself.

Incentives reward scale, not distribution. The economic model for provers, similar to Filecoin or Arweave mining, creates economies of scale where the largest operators achieve the lowest marginal cost, squeezing out smaller participants.

Evidence: Look at zk-rollup sequencers. Today, Polygon zkEVM and zkSync Era rely on centralized provers from their core teams; the capital and expertise required make a decentralized network of equals a fiction.