Great markets reward what is scarce.
In Web3 the scarce good is not blockspace any more. It is proof supply. Succinct’s bet is simple. Turn proofs into an open market that anyone can tap and everything above it moves faster and safer.
1. What Succinct has actually built
A decentralized prover network on Ethereum plus a high performance zk virtual machine called SP1. Builders submit proof jobs. Independent provers compete to deliver. Payments staking and slashing are natively wired through the PROVE token. This reframes verification as a two sided market rather than a captive service.
2. Mainnet live and PROVE is the meter
Succinct switched on mainnet on 5 August 2025 and activated PROVE for payments security and governance. Academy and foundation posts confirm PROVE as the currency provers earn and users spend when they request proofs.
3. The speed turn that changes UX
SP1 Hypercube proved more than ninety percent of recent Ethereum blocks in under twelve seconds with an average near ten seconds. Industry press noted the milestone and the caveat that worst case latency still matters. This is the moment where rollups can target block interval validity and bridges feel instant to users.
4. Integrations that create durable demand
Cosmos to Ethereum via IBC Eureka compresses hundreds of validator signatures into one succinct proof that verifies on Ethereum for about two hundred thousand gas. Arbitrum chose a one year exclusive with Offchain Labs Tandem to bring Succinct proving into the ecosystem. Mantle’s OP Succinct path demonstrates fast finality near one hour rather than a week. These are real routes where value now travels over proofs.
5. Hardware supply decides cost curves
ZAN joined as a multi node prover after co designing an FPGA path that pushed SP1 roughly twenty times faster than a CPU baseline. Cysic came online with GPU clusters to handle production workloads and is pushing toward specialized silicon. An open market that attracts specialists is how proof prices fall without central choke points.
6. Today’s market
PROVE is trading near eighty seven cents with a session range from about eighty seven cents to ninety eight cents. Short term price is volatile across fresh listings. The more important signal is that proof jobs are a direct driver of token demand because proofs are paid in PROVE and provers bond it for reliability.
7. Where the competition is strong and why that help
StarkWare is pushing a light client style prover called S two for phones laptops and browsers and reports large speedups on select circuits. RISC Zero is fielding an open cluster approach and targets single digit second real time proofs on off the shelf GPU rigs while rolling out a decentralized market of its own. This pressure is healthy. It expands the total addressable proof market while Succinct positions as a neutral clearinghouse that many chains can plug into.
8. The simple thesis
Every cycle has a hidden commodity. For the internet it was bandwidth. For AI it is compute. For Web3 it is proofs. Succinct is commoditizing verification. If block interval proving becomes normal and cross chain light clients become cheap the network that supplies proofs on demand becomes quiet center stage.
That is the bet behind PROVE.
