Proving is the bottleneck. ZK-Rollups like zkSync and Starknet are constrained by the computational intensity of generating proofs, not by L1 settlement speed. This creates a direct market for specialized hardware.
the-modular-blockchain-thesis-explained
Blog
Why RISC-V and ZK Are Converging in Prover Hardware
The open-source, modular RISC-V ISA is becoming the de facto standard for building specialized, efficient hardware accelerators for ZK-proof generation. This convergence is a first-principles response to the computational demands of proving systems like Halo2, Plonk, and STARKs.
introduction
THE ARCHITECTURAL IMPERATIVE
Introduction
The convergence of RISC-V and Zero-Knowledge cryptography is a deterministic outcome of the prover hardware scaling bottleneck.
RISC-V enables custom instruction sets. Unlike proprietary ISAs, the open RISC-V standard allows chip designers to add custom extensions for ZK-friendly operations like finite field arithmetic and polynomial commitments, a strategy used by Cysic and Ulvetanna.
ASICs are inevitable but inflexible. While monolithic ZK-ASICs offer peak performance, they risk obsolescence with rapid cryptographic innovation. RISC-V cores offer a middle ground of programmability with hardware acceleration.
Evidence: The Ethereum Foundation's PSE ZK Fellowship explicitly funds RISC-V and ZK hardware research, signaling a clear industry vector away from general-purpose compute.
thesis-statement
THE HARDWARE IMPERATIVE
The Core Thesis
The convergence of RISC-V and ZK is a structural response to the unsustainable computational demands of modern zero-knowledge proving.
RISC-V enables custom acceleration. The open ISA allows architects to design specialized hardware extensions for ZK primitives like MSMs and NTTs, bypassing the limitations of general-purpose CPUs and GPUs.
ZK provers are memory-bound. The dominant cost in proving is data movement, not computation. RISC-V's modularity permits co-processors with wide vector units and high-bandwidth memory interfaces that GPUs lack.
Proprietary hardware creates centralization. A closed ecosystem of custom ASICs from firms like Jump Crypto or Ingonyama risks creating prover oligopolies, undermining the decentralized ethos of the L2s they serve.
Evidence: The ZPrize competition for MSM on RISC-V, and projects like RISC Zero building general-purpose ZK virtual machines, validate the architectural shift.
market-context
THE HARDWARE IMPERATIVE
The Prover Bottleneck
The exponential growth of ZK-Rollups is colliding with the physical limits of general-purpose compute, forcing a specialized hardware race.
Proving is the new mining. Zero-knowledge proof generation for chains like zkSync Era and StarkNet is computationally explosive, consuming 100-1000x more cycles than the original transaction execution. This creates a centralizing economic force where only entities with optimized hardware can profitably operate provers.
RISC-V enables custom instruction sets. Unlike locked-down x86 or ARM ISAs, the open RISC-V architecture allows chip designers to add domain-specific instructions for finite field arithmetic and polynomial computations. This is the same playbook Nvidia used with CUDA cores for AI, but for cryptographic primitives.
The bottleneck is memory, not compute. ZK proving algorithms like Plonky2 and Halo2 create massive intermediate states that overwhelm GPU VRAM and CPU caches. Custom RISC-V accelerators integrate high-bandwidth memory on-die, a design necessity that commodity hardware cannot match.
Evidence: A zkEVM proof for 10,000 transactions takes ~3 minutes on a high-end GPU but will drop to seconds on next-gen RISC-V ZK ASICs. This performance delta dictates the economic viability of L2s and the security of validity proofs.
key-trends
THE PROVER HARDWARE RACE
Key Trends Driving Convergence
The exponential cost of ZK proving is forcing a fundamental architectural shift from general-purpose CPUs to specialized hardware, where RISC-V's open ecosystem offers a decisive advantage.
01
The Problem: The Proving Bottleneck
General-purpose CPUs (x86/ARM) are inefficient for ZK's massive parallel arithmetic workloads, creating a linear cost barrier to blockchain scaling.\n- Cost: Proving a simple transaction can cost $0.10-$1.00 on a CPU, scaling linearly with usage.\n- Time: Complex proofs (e.g., for an L2 block) can take minutes to hours, limiting throughput.\n- Centralization Risk: High costs push proving to a few centralized, capital-intensive operators.
>1000x
Slower vs. Target
$1B+
Annual OpEx
02
The Solution: RISC-V's Architectural Freedom
RISC-V's open ISA allows for custom instruction extensions, enabling hardware that is purpose-built for ZK's dominant operations (MSMs, NTTs, Pairings).\n- Custom Instructions: Add native support for finite field arithmetic and polynomial operations, the core of SNARKs/STARKs.\n- Vertical Integration: Companies like Ingonyama and Cysic design chips where the ISA and microarchitecture are co-optimized for ZK.\n- Ecosystem Lock-in Avoidance: Avoids proprietary licensing fees and constraints of ARM/x86, enabling faster, cheaper iteration.
50-100x
Efficiency Gain
~10ms
Target Proof Time
03
The Catalyst: The Modular Stack & Prover Markets
The rise of modular blockchains (Celestia, EigenDA) and shared sequencers (Espresso, Astria) creates a competitive market for proving-as-a-service, where performance is the primary differentiator.\n- New Business Model: Dedicated prover networks (e.g., Succinct, GeVulcan) can monetize hardware efficiency.\n- Universal Circuits: Projects like RISC Zero and SP1 use RISC-V to create general-purpose ZK VMs, making any computation provable on commodity hardware.\n- Interoperability Demand: Cross-chain proofs via zkBridges (like those from Polyhedra using zkBridge) require fast, cheap proving to be viable.
$10B+
Prover Market Potential
<$0.001
Target Cost/Proof
04
The Endgame: ASIC Resistance is a Fallacy
The narrative that ZK-proof algorithms can be 'ASIC-resistant' is collapsing under economic pressure. Specialization is inevitable, and RISC-V is the path to doing it in an open, competitive manner.\n- Algorithm Agility: New ZK constructions (STARKs, Plonky2, Nova) emerge every 12-18 months; locked-in ASICs become obsolete.\n- RISC-V Flexibility: A well-designed RISC-V core with ZK extensions can adapt via firmware to new proof systems, preserving hardware utility.\n- Strategic Imperative: For L2s like zkSync, Starknet, and Scroll, controlling the proving cost curve is existential; they will fund this convergence.
18mo
Algo Churn Cycle
1000+
Custom Extensions
PROVER HARDWARE
Architectural Showdown: x86/ARM vs. RISC-V for ZK
Comparison of instruction set architectures (ISAs) for optimizing zero-knowledge proof generation, focusing on hardware design freedom and cryptographic acceleration.
| Architectural Feature / Metric | x86 (e.g., Intel, AMD) | ARM (e.g., AWS Graviton, Apple Silicon) | RISC-V (e.g., Custom ASIC/FPGA) |
|---|---|---|---|
ISA Licensing Model | Proprietary, Complex Cross-Licensing | Proprietary, Arm Ltd. License Fees | Open Standard, Royalty-Free |
Custom Instruction Extension | Limited (via Arm CCA/Neoverse) | ||
Typical Prover Latency (Gnark, Plonk) | 50-200 ms | 30-150 ms | < 10 ms (with custom accelerators) |
Power Efficiency (Joules per Proof) | 1.0x (Baseline) | ~1.5x more efficient | 10-100x more efficient (ASIC) |
Hardware/Software Co-Design Flexibility | |||
Native Support for Finite Field Ops (e.g., Modular Mul) | Emulated in Software | Emulated in Software | Direct Custom Instruction |
Ecosystem for ZK-Specific Toolchains (LLVM, CirC) | Mature, General-Purpose | Growing, Cloud-Optimized | Emerging, Niche (e.g., Ingonyama, ZPrize) |
Time-to-Market for Custom Silicon | N/A (Cannot Customize) |
| 6-18 months (Open-Source Cores) |
protocol-spotlight
THE ZK PROVER ARMS RACE
Builder Spotlight: Who's Betting on RISC-V?
The exponential cost of generating zero-knowledge proofs is the single biggest bottleneck to scaling blockchains. The industry's answer is custom hardware, and RISC-V is the open ISA of choice.
01
The Problem: The x86/GPU Bottleneck
General-purpose CPUs and GPUs are inefficient for ZK's massive parallel arithmetic workloads. This creates unsustainable costs for L2s like zkSync, Starknet, and Polygon zkEVM.
- Inefficient ISA: x86 instructions are bloated for modular arithmetic.
- Memory Wall: Proof generation is memory-bound, not compute-bound.
- Economic Ceiling: Proving costs threaten L2 viability at 1M+ TPS.
~90%
Inefficiency
$1M+
Monthly Cost
02
The Solution: RISC-V's Architectural Freedom
RISC-V's open, modular ISA allows builders to design chips from the ground up for ZK's unique workloads (MSMs, NTTs).
- Custom Instructions: Add native finite field arithmetic ops.
- Tailored Memory Hierarchy: Optimize for large polynomial data sets.
- No Licensing Tax: Avoids ARM/x86 royalties, enabling vertical integration by teams like Ingonyama and Cysic.
10-100x
Potential Gain
$0
ISA Royalty
03
Ingonyama: The GPU-to-ASIC Bridge
This Israeli startup is building parallel processing units (PPUs)—a hybrid between GPUs and ASICs—using RISC-V. They target the MSM (Multi-Scalar Multiplication) operation, which dominates prover runtime.
- ICICLE Library: Open-source GPU acceleration for MSMs, de-risking the path to silicon.
- Gradual Specialization: Path from FPGA to full-custom ASIC.
- Backer Signal: Funded by Walden Catalyst, betting on the hardware stack.
~50%
MSM Runtime
FPGA→ASIC
Roadmap
04
Cysic: The Full-Stack Prover ASIC
Cysic is developing ZK-specific ASICs with a full-stack approach, from hardware to proving software. Their goal is to be the AWS of ZK proving.
- Holistic Design: Co-designs hardware with software SDK for zkEVM circuits.
- Multi-Prover Support: Targeting Halo2, Plonky2, and Groth16.
- VC Confidence: Raised over $20M from Polychain, HashKey et al., validating the thesis.
100x+
Target Speedup
$20M+
Funding
05
The Meta-Strategy: Control the Compute Layer
L2s and infrastructure firms aren't just buying chips; they're investing to own the stack. Polygon partnered with Toposware for zkASICs. Scroll is researching acceleration. The goal is proving sovereignty.
- Economic Moats: Cheaper proofs = lower fees = more users.
- Performance Guarantees: No reliance on centralized prover services.
- Long-Term Hedge: Against Nvidia's dominance and pricing power.
Vertical
Integration
Sovereignty
Goal
06
The Endgame: Commoditized Trust
The convergence of RISC-V and ZK will turn cryptographic verification into a cheap, abundant resource. This isn't just about faster L2s.
- ZK Coprocessors: On-chain DApps with off-chain logic (e.g., RISC Zero).
- Prover Markets: Decentralized proof generation networks.
- New Primitives: Enables currently impossible applications in DeFi and gaming.
$0.01
Target Proof Cost
Ubiquitous
ZK Vision
deep-dive
THE HARDWARE PROOF
The Modular Synergy: ISA Meets Blockchain
The convergence of RISC-V's open ISA and zero-knowledge cryptography is creating a new hardware paradigm for scalable, trust-minimized computation.
RISC-V enables prover specialization. Its modular, open-source instruction set architecture allows chip designers to create custom accelerators for specific ZK-friendly hash functions like Poseidon and Pedersen, bypassing the inefficiency of general-purpose CPUs.
ZK proofs demand deterministic execution. Unlike speculative execution in modern CPUs, prover hardware requires perfect reproducibility. RISC-V's simplicity eliminates unpredictable performance counters and complex out-of-order logic that break proof systems.
This creates a virtuous cycle. Custom RISC-V-based accelerators from firms like Ingonyama and Ulvetanna generate faster, cheaper proofs. This lowers costs for ZK-rollups like StarkNet and zkSync, accelerating adoption and funding further hardware R&D.
Evidence: Ingonyama's prototype, built on a RISC-V core with a custom arithmetic unit, demonstrated a 100x speedup in multi-scalar multiplication, a core ZK operation, versus a standard CPU.
risk-analysis
WHY RISC-V AND ZK ARE CONVERGING
The Bear Case: Risks and Hurdles
The hardware race for ZK proving is accelerating, but the path to a dominant architecture is fraught with technical and economic landmines.
01
The ASIC Wall: Why Custom Silicon is Inevitable
General-purpose CPUs and GPUs hit a performance ceiling for ZK proving. The massive parallelism and specialized arithmetic of ZK-SNARKs (e.g., MSM, NTT) demand custom silicon to achieve the 1000x+ speedups needed for real-time verification. RISC-V's open ISA provides the foundation to build these application-specific accelerators without vendor lock-in.
- Performance Gap: GPU proving times for a large rollup batch can be minutes to hours, while targets are seconds.
- Economic Imperative: Prover costs dominate L2 operational expenses; a 10x cost reduction is a competitive moat.
- Architectural Freedom: RISC-V enables designing custom instructions for finite field arithmetic, bypassing the limitations of x86/ARM.
1000x
Target Speedup
>60%
OpEx Dominance
02
The Fragmentation Trap: Proliferating Proof Systems
The ZK landscape is a battlefield of incompatible proof systems (Plonk, STARK, Groth16, Nova). Each requires different hardware optimizations. Building a single, universal ZK ASIC is currently impossible, risking massive R&D spend on a architecture that becomes obsolete.
- Market Split: Major L2s use different stacks (zkSync's Boojum, Polygon zkEVM's Plonky2, Starknet's Cairo).
- R&D Silos: Companies like Ingonyama, Ulvetanna, and Cysic are betting on different technical paths.
- Standardization Lag: No equivalent to NVIDIA's CUDA exists for ZK, slowing developer adoption and tooling.
5+
Major Proof Systems
$100M+
R&D at Risk
03
The Economic Paradox: Decentralization vs. Efficiency
High-performance, centralized prover farms create a single point of failure and censorship, undermining crypto's core tenets. However, decentralizing proof generation across commodity hardware sacrifices the very cost and speed advantages that justify the hardware investment.
- Centralization Risk: A few large prover pools could control major L2s, akin to mining pools in PoW.
- Throughput Trade-off: A decentralized network of prover nodes may not saturate a $10M ASIC's capacity, destroying its ROI.
- Solution Models: Projects like Espresso Systems (shared sequencers) and Geometric Energy Corp (proof markets) are exploring hybrid models, but they remain unproven at scale.
1-3
Likely Prover Pools
$10M
ASIC Capex
04
The Software Lag: Where are the Developers?
RISC-V's hardware flexibility is meaningless without a mature, high-performance software stack for ZK. The toolchain gap—compilers, formal verification, and SDKs—between RISC-V and established platforms like ARM is a 3-5 year development hurdle.
- Compiler Immaturity: LLVM support for RISC-V custom extensions is nascent.
- ZK Library Porting: Critical libraries like arkworks and libsnark are not optimized for novel RISC-V architectures.
- Two-Front War: Teams must innovate on both the silicon and the software simultaneously, a classic recipe for delays.
3-5 yrs
Toolchain Gap
0
Production SDKs
future-outlook
THE CONVERGENCE
Future Outlook: The Prover Commoditization Endgame
The hardware race for ZK provers is accelerating a fundamental shift towards open, commoditized compute, with RISC-V as the inevitable architectural winner.
Proving is a commodity. The core function—generating a succinct proof—is a standardized computational task. Specialized hardware like zkASICs from Cysic or Ulvetanna will initially dominate, but the underlying instruction set will not remain proprietary.
RISC-V enables horizontal scaling. Unlike closed architectures from NVIDIA or Intel, the open RISC-V ISA allows for custom instruction extensions tailored for finite field arithmetic. This creates a competitive, multi-vendor supply chain for prover chips, mirroring the evolution of cloud computing.
ZK-VMs drive standardization. Projects like zkEVM clients (e.g., Polygon zkEVM, Scroll, Taiko) and general-purpose ZK-VMs (Risc Zero, SP1) require a common proving target. A standardized RISC-V-based prover becomes the universal execution layer, decoupling proof generation from any single software stack.
Evidence: The Ethereum Foundation's PSE team and projects like Ingonyama are already building RISC-V-based ZK accelerators. This mirrors the historical path where proprietary hardware (Sun SPARC) lost to commodity x86 for general compute.
takeaways
THE HARDWARE PROVER RACE
Key Takeaways for Builders and Investors
The convergence of RISC-V and Zero-Knowledge proofs is creating a new, open-source hardware paradigm for scaling blockchains, moving beyond proprietary ASICs.
01
The Problem: Proprietary ASIC Lock-In
Current ZK acceleration relies on custom, closed-source hardware (e.g., Nvidia GPUs, proprietary ASICs). This creates vendor lock-in, supply chain risk, and stifles innovation by centralizing prover power.
- High Barrier to Entry: Capital costs for bespoke hardware are prohibitive for new entrants.
- Single Points of Failure: Reliance on a single vendor's roadmap and manufacturing.
- Opaque Optimizations: Closed ecosystems prevent collaborative efficiency gains.
1-2 Vendors
Market Control
$M+
Entry Cost
02
The Solution: RISC-V's Open ISA
RISC-V provides a free, modular Instruction Set Architecture, enabling custom chips (ZK co-processors) tailored for SNARK/STARK operations without licensing fees.
- Design Sovereignty: Teams like Ingonyama, Cysic, and Ulvetanna can build optimized prover chips without ARM/Nvidia.
- Modularity: Custom extensions (e.g., for finite field arithmetic, MSMs) can be added directly to the ISA.
- Ecosystem Flywheel: Open standards attract more researchers and tooling, accelerating optimization cycles.
$0
License Fee
100%
Customizable
03
The Economic Flywheel: Cheaper, Faster Proofs
Commoditized, open-source prover hardware directly lowers the cost of ZK verification, unlocking new use cases for ZK-Rollups (Starknet, zkSync), private transactions, and interoperability.
- Lower L2 Fees: Prover cost is the primary bottleneck; hardware gains translate to ~10-100x cheaper user transactions.
- New App Primitives: Affordable ZK enables fully on-chain games, order-book DEXs, and compliant DeFi.
- Prover Marketplaces: Decentralized networks of RISC-V provers can compete on cost and latency, similar to EigenLayer for AVS.
10-100x
Cheaper Txs
~1s
Prove Time Goal
04
The Strategic Bet: Avoiding the x86 Mistake
The crypto ecosystem is preemptively adopting RISC-V to avoid the centralization pitfalls of the traditional tech stack, where Intel/ARM control the foundational layer.
- Architectural Sovereignty: Control the compute base for the decentralized economy.
- Faster Iteration: Open-source hardware allows rapid adaptation to new ZK constructions (e.g., Plonk, STARK, Halo2).
- Regulatory Moats: A decentralized, permissionless prover network is more resilient to geopolitical and regulatory pressure than centralized chip fabs.
Zero
Backdoors
Global
Supply Chain
05
The Investment Thesis: Vertical Integration
Winning teams will control the full stack: ZK circuit design, compiler toolchains (Circom, Cairo), and RISC-V hardware. This mirrors Apple's model for optimal performance.
- Performance Capture: Vertical stacks capture value from algorithm to silicon, not just one layer.
- Developer Adoption: The best stack (e.g., StarkWare's potential hardware play) will attract the most builders.
- Hardware as a Service: Emergence of cloud-based ZK proving services powered by custom RISC-V clusters.
Full-Stack
Value Capture
10x
Efficiency Gain
06
The Risk: Software Maturity & Standardization
The RISC-V software ecosystem (compilers, formal verification tools) lags behind ARM/x86. ZK-specific toolchains are nascent. Fragmentation is a near-term risk.
- Compiler Gaps: Lack of mature LLVM/GCC backends for custom ZK extensions slows development.
- Security Audits: Novel hardware requires extensive formal verification to prevent critical bugs.
- Standard Wars: Competing RISC-V extensions could fragment the prover market before it consolidates.
2-5 Years
Maturity Timeline
High
Execution Risk
ENQUIRY
Get In Touch
today.
Our experts will offer a free quote and a 30min call to discuss your project.
NDA Protected
Confidentiality24h Response
Time to ValueDirectly to Engineering Team
No Sales Fluff10+
Protocols Shipped
$20M+
TVL Overall