In the past two years, zero-knowledge proofs (ZK Proof) have moved from the academic fringe to the core of the industry. Developers are excited to see its huge potential in privacy, scalability, and cross-chain interoperability, but they also cannot avoid a practical issue: the high cost of generating these complex proofs, who will foot the bill?

This is exactly the solution proposed by Succinct Labs through the Succinct Prover network and SP1. Instead of having each project build a massive proof infrastructure independently, it is better to outsource this computing power to a decentralized ZK Prover network, allowing the market to reallocate costs and benefits.

The economic issues of ZK proof

Traditional ZK systems are mostly 'closed': each team has to design proof circuits and maintain proof servers. The problem with this model is:

Costs are opaque, making it difficult for developers to predict future expenses;

Waste of computing resources, repeated construction of different projects;

Lack of economies of scale, proving that generation efficiency is limited.

The Succinct Prover network markets this problem. Developers only need to connect to SP1 to generate high-performance ZK proofs through network requests, with the underlying computing power provided by distributed Prover nodes. This way, computing power providers earn profits while demand-side pays controllable fees, and the network completes resource matching.

From costs to market: The blue ocean potential of Succinct

If we view Ethereum's gas market as an 'energy market for transactions,' then the Succinct Prover network is expected to become the 'computing power market for ZK.' This model may bring threefold blue ocean opportunities:

1. Proof-as-a-Service

Developers do not need to worry about hardware and optimization; they only need to pay to call the API to obtain fast proofs. This is very similar to the logic that AWS changed cloud computing.

2. Marketization of computing power liquidity

As the number of Prover nodes increases, competition will drive prices down, which will also stimulate more hardware providers to enter, forming a new business model similar to 'mining.'

3. Cross-chain and modular ZK infrastructure

In the future, whether it is Rollup settlement, on-chain AI reasoning, or off-chain data verifiability, they may directly call the Succinct Prover network instead of each reinventing the wheel.

Creative perspective: The 'new type of mining' of ZK proof

Bitcoin once pioneered the economic model of 'mining,' turning idle global computing power into digital assets. The Succinct Prover network may be at a similar turning point:

The difference here is that the computing power is not blind hash collisions, but serves for ZK proof generation, directly producing verifiable social value.

In the more distant future, we may see 'ZK mining pools,' 'proof computing power leasing markets,' and even 'ZK MEV,' which is not only a technological evolution but also a reconstruction of economic paradigms.

Succinct Labs has not only proven the excellence of SP1 in performance but has also opened a new commercial blue ocean at the economic level. The future of ZK proof may not only be about improving efficiency, but also about a decentralized, sustainable computing economy. In this new economy, Succinct has the opportunity to become the 'AWS of ZK.'@Succinct #SuccinctLabs $PROVE