$PROVE The recent trend has been quite stable, stabilizing around 1U for the past two days, and today it once surged to 1.5U, with market sentiment clearly warming up. The underlying team @Succinct Succinct Labs is not a traditional L2 but ZK infrastructure aimed at the entire Web3 industry—the world's first decentralized zero-knowledge proof network (Decentralized Prover Network).
Many people may still be stuck at the concept of 'ZK=zero-knowledge proof', but if you want to create a zkSwap, zk lending, or zk network on-chain, you typically need to hire a high-salary CTO with a cryptographic background to develop a complex ZK system from scratch—high development costs, long cycles, and high risks.
Succinct's positioning is very unique: it does not compete with any applications but serves as a 'layer 2 notary', providing fast and secure ZK proof services for any chain and any Rollup. Developers do not need to reinvent the wheel; they just need to call Succinct's API to integrate zero-knowledge proofs into their projects. This significantly lowers the barrier to ZK and accelerates the deployment speed of applications.
In terms of technical highlights, Succinct's core technology SP1 'Hypercube' has reduced the time to generate Ethereum mainnet block validity proofs to ~10 seconds. It is important to note that the Ethereum mainnet block time is approximately 12 seconds, which means it can almost complete the proof of the previous block before the next block is generated, achieving true Real-time Proving. For L2, this allows users to obtain mainnet-level security confirmation almost instantly, greatly enhancing experience and efficiency.
Why is this crucial for Ethereum's future?
Ethereum's ten-year scalability goal is 10,000 TPS, which will rely on the ZK proof network to achieve real-time proof. Vitalik has also clearly stated that Optimistic Rollup will eventually adopt zero-knowledge proofs to eliminate the 7-day challenge period, which will stimulate more L2s to generate ZK proofs and directly increase the demand for PROVE infrastructure.
From a business model perspective, Succinct charges a fee for each ZK proof generated, which means its revenue will naturally scale with the growth of ZK demand—this is a solid commercialization logic that does not depend on pure token speculation. In the future, it even hopes to enter a long-term cash flow model similar to ZKaaS (Zero-Knowledge Proof as a Service), becoming the underlying toll collector of Web3 like AWS for the internet.
In addition, as a decentralized prover network, Succinct does not rely on a single data center, aligning better with the trustless spirit of Web3. The nodes that stake PROVE in the network are these 'decentralized notaries', participating in proving and earning rewards.
Of course, there are also things to pay attention to in the short term: the market for ZK applications has not yet fully opened, and the actual 'notary revenue' is still not significant at this stage. The future distribution of specific profits (team, nodes, buyback ratio) still needs to be observed regarding the team's organization and execution capability. However, in the long run, with the growth of on-chain transaction volume, L2 user numbers, and cross-chain demand, the ZK proof market has enormous potential, and PROVE will directly benefit.
In summary:
If Ethereum's scalability is likened to a mine, then PROVE is an essential shovel. It is not a story but infrastructure; not short-term speculation but a long-term track. As ZK becomes the core path for Ethereum's scalability, PROVE is likely to be the 'toll booth' on this road, combining technology and commercialization, worthy of long-term attention.#SuccinctLabs
