@Succinct The blockchain industry has long faced a 'deadlock': to achieve high concurrency, one must sacrifice privacy or security; to achieve cross-chain interoperability, one must rely on third-party trust; even zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), this 'breakthrough technology', have become 'toys for cryptography PhDs' due to high development barriers. Until Succinct Labs introduced SP1 zkVM (zero-knowledge virtual machine) — it didn’t just shout slogans, but effectively turned ZKP into tools that developers can directly use and projects can implement at a low cost, even being referred to in the industry as 'the new infrastructure for trusted computing in blockchain'. Today, we will analyze how it turns 'blockchain fast and secure' from a slogan into reality from five dimensions: technical implementation, scenario breakthroughs, community quality, capital recognition, and ecological synergy.

Technical Implementation: SP1 zkVM has transformed ZKP development from 'digesting papers' to 'writing code'.

The core value of ZKP is 'proving correctness without exposing data', but the biggest problem in the past was 'too troublesome to use' — developers had to master underlying cryptography like elliptic curves and hash functions, and adapt to different blockchain architectures. Succinct's SP1 zkVM has directly eliminated this 'trouble':

• Threshold Dropped: Rust + RISC-V Dual Compatibility: No longer needing to digest hundreds of pages of cryptography papers, developers can write programs using the familiar Rust language, generating ZKP directly after coding; more importantly, it perfectly supports the RISC-V architecture — in ecosystems like Ethereum, OP Stack, etc., DeFi protocols and NFT projects already based on RISC-V can integrate ZKP without needing to refactor code, shortening the development cycle by 70%. For example, a certain Layer2 project originally required 6 months for ZKP adaptation, but it was completed in just over 1 month after using SP1.

• Performance Surge: FPGA Acceleration Crushes Traditional CPU: Another pain point of ZKP is 'slow proof generation and high costs' — in the past, generating proofs for 1000 transactions using a CPU would take over 20 minutes and cost dozens of dollars. Succinct collaborated with ZAN (AntChain OpenLabs) to use FPGA chips for hardware acceleration, directly increasing the speed by 20 times, allowing proofs of equivalent scale to be generated within one minute, with costs reduced to one-tenth of the original, making ZKP finally affordable for small and medium projects.

• Scenario Adaptation: Recursive Proofs Meet Rollups' Urgent Needs: SP1 supports 'recursive proofs' — simply put, it packages 100 or 1000 small proofs into 1 large proof, and during verification, only this 1 needs to be checked. This is crucial for Layer2 Rollups: originally, Rollups had to transmit a large amount of proof data to the Ethereum mainnet, but now the size can be compressed by 90%, saving Gas fees and tripling transaction confirmation speed, perfectly solving the 'Layer2 is fast, but slow on-chain' issue.

Scenario Breakthrough: Not only serving Ethereum, but also helping Bitcoin 'cross-chain'.

Many people think Succinct only makes ZKP tools for the Ethereum ecosystem, but its ambitions go far beyond that — the goal is to enable all blockchains to utilize 'trusted computing', even including Bitcoin, which lacks smart contracts:

• Ethereum's 'Performance Patch': The industry compares SP1 to the 'performance patch of Ethereum' for good reason. It not only provides fault proofs for Layer2 Rollups (such as OP Succinct Lite in collaboration with 0xFacet, making Rollups' transactions safer), but also launched SP1-CC (ZK Co-Processor) — directly breaking through the functional limitations of Ethereum's EVM, allowing EVM chains to perform complex ZKP computations, such as cross-pool liquidation in DeFi and on-chain identity verification, ensuring privacy while maintaining speed.

• Bitcoin's 'Trust-Minimized Bridge': This is the most surprising breakthrough from Succinct. In the past, interoperability between Bitcoin and smart contract chains like Ethereum and BNB Chain could only rely on centralized exchanges or custodians, and once the platform had issues, user assets would be lost. Now, Succinct is collaborating with Fiamma, using the BitVM2 + SP1 solution to achieve BTC cross-chain without third-party trust — proving asset ownership on the Bitcoin chain through ZKP, without exposing user data, while ensuring asset security, filling the gap in 'interoperability between Bitcoin and smart contract chains'.

• 130+ Chains' 'Trusted Passport': Relying on the LayerZero protocol, Succinct's $PROVE token can already natively cross-chain between Ethereum and BNB Chain, and in the future, it will cover over 130 chains connected by LayerZero. This is not simply 'token cross-chain', but uses ZKP for underlying verification — for example, the results of a smart contract call on Chain A can be proven through SP1, allowing Chain B to recognize it directly without recalculating, truly achieving 'trusted computing across chains'.

Community Quality: 217,000 followers not engaging in 'traffic frenzy', 20,000 testing slots reserved only for 'true players'.

Many blockchain projects today rely on 'forwarding lottery draws and airdrops' to boost user numbers, but Succinct takes the opposite approach — its community logic is 'quality > quantity', focusing all resources on core participants who can help the project grow:

• Screening Mechanism: Filtering out 'welfare seekers' and retaining 'tech enthusiasts': As of August 2025, Succinct's X account (@Succinct abs) has 217,000 followers, which is a decent heat, but the Discord test network only opened about 20,000 slots. Want to secure a slot? You have to complete a series of technical tasks — such as testing SP1's functional vulnerabilities, submitting code optimization suggestions, or even contributing open-source code to SP1 on GitHub. The users filtered this way are not 'here for airdrops', but 'those who understand technology and are willing to follow the project long-term'.

• Incentive Logic: Airdrops do not reward 'passive earners', but only 'active contributors': The first airdrop accounts for 5% of the total $PROVE token supply, but the distribution rules are very clear — only given to three types of people: users who seriously provided feedback in the test network, open-source developers who contributed code to SP1, and deeply cooperative ecological partners. There are no benefits for 'forwarding to get a share' or gimmicks like 'registration gives rewards', directly tying incentives to 'project contributions', ensuring the long-term value of the community.

• Ecological Core: KOL + Developer Two-Way Support: In Succinct's community, there are influential figures like Laura Shin (top crypto journalist) and Fred Ehrsam (Co-founder of Coinbase), along with many Rust developers maintaining SP1 code on GitHub — KOLs help expand the project's industry influence while developers help refine the technical ecosystem, creating a community barrier that 'no one can easily replicate'.

Capital Recognition: $55 million in funding reflects top institutions' bets on 'ZKP infrastructure'.

Succinct's financing, rather than looking at the amount, focuses on 'who the investors are' — being able to attract Paradigm to lead and Eigenlayer's founder to follow essentially indicates the industry's recognition of its 'scarce value in ZKP infrastructure':

• Investors: All 'tech-focused', no 'short-term speculators': $55 million financing (seed round + Series A), led by Paradigm — this fund is known in the crypto circle for 'only investing in projects with long-term technical barriers' and never touching 'speculative air coins'; participants also include Robot Ventures (focused on Web3 infrastructure), ZK Validator (top fund in the ZKP vertical), as well as founders of Eigenlayer and Polygon. These investors are not here to 'make quick money', but are betting that 'ZKP will become the next generation core infrastructure of blockchain', and Succinct is a key player in this field.

• Token Economy: Avoiding 'team cashing out', preserving ecological funds: The total supply of $PROVE is 1 billion, and the distribution mechanism is very realistic: 25% invested in ecosystem and R&D (ensuring technology can continue to iterate without halting), 25% for public and incentives (attracting new users without excessive distribution to avoid inflation), 29.5% for core contributors (with a lock-up period, ensuring the team does not abandon the project midway), and 10.5% for investors (reasonable returns without infringing on ecological interests). There are no pitfalls of 'too high a team share' or risks of 'short-term unlocking crashing the market', fully serving the project's long-term development.

Ecological Synergy: Each collaboration is addressing the shortcomings of 'ZKP infrastructure'.

Succinct's collaborations are not 'token-counting bindings', but precisely target its shortcomings — performance, security, scenarios, with each collaboration piecing together 'single-point technology' into a 'closed-loop ecosystem':

• Performance Boost: FPGA acceleration makes ZKP 'accessible to the masses': Collaborating with ZAN (AntChain OpenLabs) directly addressed the old problem of ZKP being 'expensive and slow'. In the past, generating proofs with CPUs was simply unaffordable for small and medium projects; now with FPGA acceleration, costs have dropped by 90% and speed increased by 20 times, making ZKP a tool that 'small and medium projects can also use' instead of being 'exclusive to large enterprises'.

• Security Supplement: Formal Verification Closes 'Code Vulnerabilities': In collaboration with Nethermind (the Ethereum core client developer), the SP1 is undergoing 'formal verification' — simply put, using mathematical logic to prove that SP1's code has no vulnerabilities, thus avoiding the risk of 'proof errors leading to user asset loss'. This is the most crucial safety endorsement for ZKP projects, something many peers have not accomplished.

• Scenario Supplement: Covering All Chain Needs from Layer2 to Bitcoin: Collaborating with 0xFacet, providing ZK fault proofs for Stage 2 Rollups (making Layer2 safer); collaborating with Fiamma to create a trust-minimized bridge for Bitcoin (providing ZKP services for non-smart contract chains); collaborating with LayerZero to make $PROVE cross-chain (connecting over 130 chains); even supporting Celestia's Blobstream (data availability solution), using SP1 to verify cross-chain data integrity. Now, Succinct is no longer just a project 'serving Ethereum', but can cover mainstream blockchain ZKP infrastructure.

Summary: What Succinct aims to be is a 'trusted computing connector' for blockchain.

The value of Succinct Labs has never been 'just another ZKP project', but transforming ZKP from a 'technical concept' into 'implementable infrastructure' — it has solved the 'developers can't use it' problem with SP1 zkVM, addressed the 'high costs and slow speeds' issue with FPGA acceleration, and tackled the 'few scenarios and cross-chain difficulties' through ecological collaboration.

Although it still faces competition in the ZKP track (like Scroll and StarkWare) and must overcome technical challenges of multi-chain adaptation, from the perspectives of 'lowering technical barriers + high community quality + long-term capital bets + ecological short-board supplementation', it is likely to become a key player in driving the scalable implementation of ZKP technology. In the future, when blockchain is no longer trapped in the contradiction of 'scalability' and 'security', and cross-chain interoperability no longer relies on third-party trust, Succinct will likely be behind it — after all, its mission is to 'prove the software of the world', not just 'create a ZKP tool'. @Succinct #SuccinctLabs $PROVE