Technical Interpretation: The Triangular Relationship of SP1 zkVM, Proof Contests, and Network Reliability
Succinct's technical design ties three things together: General zkVM (SP1), proof contest mechanism (proof contests / auctions), and the staking/incentive layer (PROVE). After developers submit proof requests, the network selects the optimal prover through bidding—bidding considers price and latency; the prover generates proofs using SP1 and submits on-chain settlements; finally, the staking and slashing mechanisms constrain the prover's honesty and availability. The value of this combination lies in merging the three aspects of 'who computes, how much is computed, and how to ensure correctness' into economic design, thereby finding a workable compromise between performance and trust.
From an engineering perspective, the goal of SP1 is to balance broad program compatibility with low-latency proof generation, which means Succinct is working hard on prover implementation, parallelization, and network matching algorithms—optimizations at any stage will directly translate into cost reduction or throughput improvement, which is why the community pays close attention to its 'scalability' and 'actual throughput'.
