Brevis, a zero-knowledge (ZK) technology innovator, has reached a major milestone with its Pico Prism system, achieving 99.6% real-time proving of Ethereum blocks. This breakthrough was accomplished using consumer-grade GPUs, rather than enterprise-level hardware, making it more accessible and cost-effective.
The system can generate proofs for Ethereum blocks in under 12 seconds, with an average proving time of just 6.9 seconds when powered by 64 NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPUs. This represents a 71% speed improvement over comparable systems like SP1 Hypercube and reduces GPU hardware costs by approximately 50%. The total setup cost is estimated at $128,000, positioning Pico Prism as one of the most cost-efficient high-performance proving systems available.
This advancement paves the way for significant scalability improvements, potentially enabling 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) on Ethereum, a monumental leap from the current 15–30 TPS on Layer 1. Additionally, it could make smartphone-based node validation a practical reality, allowing ordinary users to become full network validators without relying on powerful servers or data centers.
Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin endorsed the development, stating, "Excited to see @brevis_zk's Pico Prism entering the ZK-EVM proving arena! An important step forward in ZK-EVM proving speed and diversity." Brevis CEO Mo Dong emphasized that the goal was to make high-speed proving practical and accessible for any blockchain requiring real-time verifiability.
The distributed multi-GPU architecture of Pico Prism enables parallelized computation, enhancing rollup efficiency, improving finality for DeFi protocols, and lowering operational costs for decentralized applications. However, experts caution that rigorous audits and real-world testing are essential before large-scale deployment.
