i remember reading the network launch notes at first the number of active provers was modest but the vision was always a global marketplace of nodes not a handful of large farms but many operators around the world that’s what decentralisation looks like in compute
provers stake ZKC and bid on tasks some run routine proofs some heavy specialised jobs if you are a small rig with a gpu you might join a basic proving job if you are a data centre you might take large simulation proofs what matters is correctness and timeliness
as the prover network grows so does the capacity for compute jobs Boundless claims this is an elastic marketplace more provers means more capacity and lower cost for requestors that virtuous loop is hard to build but the architecture supports it
but decentralisation also brings complexity the protocol must monitor provers performance slash dishonest actors safeguard the token collateral and ensure the marketplace remains liquid these are not trivial engineering tasks
i spoke with a developer friend who said “we like that Boundless doesn’t require ultra-specialised hardware you can join as smaller operator” that kind of access matters for decentralisation because it avoids compute monopoly
if the prover network expands to hundreds or thousands of independent participants then we might see compute costs fall significantly and usage open up to new classes of apps and that for me is the pulse of the protocol because decentralisation isn’t just a buzzword it is what enables a compute layer to truly scale without central chokepoints
this blog highlights that part of the story the one where everyday machines contribute to a global mesh of proof generators and in that mesh lies empowerment