@Succinct Labs is doing something a lot of us have been waiting for — making zero knowledge proofs actually easy to use.
Normally, working with ZK is a headache: you have to learn special coding languages, build complicated circuits, and then spend forever running slow proofs. Succinct is saying, “Forget all that — just write your program in normal Rust, and we’ll handle the proving part for you.”
They’ve built two things to make that happen:
1. SP1 zkVM – Think of it like a special computer inside a proof. You write your program in Rust (or another language that compiles with LLVM), it runs in SP1’s RISC-V setup, and then you get a proof that anyone can verify without re-running the whole program.
2. The Prover Network – A decentralized group of people running prover machines all over the world. You send them a proving job, they compete to finish it first, and you get your proof faster and without trusting just one company’s server.
Why SP1 Feels Different
You code like normal: No need to learn cryptography tricks or ZK-specific languages.
It’s fast: In some tests, SP1 ran up to 28× faster than older zkVMs.
Open-source: The code is on GitHub, so anyone can dig in or contribute.
The Prover Network — Proofs on Demand
Imagine needing a proof and instantly having dozens of independent provers racing to deliver it. That’s the Prover Network. It’s permissionless, so anyone can join as a prover and earn rewards for valid proofs. The more provers, the faster and more resilient the network gets.
Why It Matters
This changes the game for things like:
Scaling blockchains and rollups
Cross-chain communication without trust
Proving AI outputs are legit
Even privacy-first gaming
Instead of only a few experts being able to use ZK, now any dev can build with it.
Backed to Scale
They’ve already raised $43M (led by Paradigm) to keep improving SP1 and expand the Prover Network. The mainnet is live, real provers are joining, and the ecosystem is growing fast.
The Big Vision
Succinct wants proving to be as easy as calling an API. If they keep their speed edge and keep things this simple, ZK might finally break out of the lab and into everyday apps.