Whats SP1 zkVM

SP1 zkVM is a zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) developed by Succinct Labs. It’s an open-source tool designed to make zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) faster, more efficient, and accessible to developers. Essentially, it allows developers to prove that a program has been executed correctly without revealing the underlying data, all while leveraging familiar programming languages like Rust.

Here’s a breakdown of what it is and how it works:

• Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs): These are cryptographic techniques that let one party (the prover) demonstrate to another (the verifier) that a statement is true—e.g., that a computation was done correctly—without disclosing any extra information. SP1 zkVM automates this process for arbitrary programs.

• Virtual Machine (VM): A zkVM like SP1 acts as a "virtual computer" that runs programs and generates ZKPs to verify their execution. Unlike traditional ZKP systems that require writing complex mathematical circuits, SP1 lets developers use standard Rust code (or other LLVM-compiled languages) to define their logic.

Features of SP1 zkVM

1、SP1 IS FEATURE COMPLETE

SP1 is the only zkVM to support a long-list of features including precompiles, efficient recursion and onchain EVM verification that make ZK accessible to any developer

1）Write Rust and use existing crates (“std” supported).

2）Unparalleled performance with precompiles and GPU prover.

3）Onchain EVM verification.

4）Open-source.

5）Audited by the best.

6）Trusted by the top teams for production-use cases.

2、SP1 IS THE FASTEST zkVM

ZKP prover performance is on an exponential trajectory for decreasing cost and latency. Since SP1’s initial launch in February, we have improved SP1’s performance by an order of magnitude (with better arithmetization, a GPU prover implementation and hardcore performance engineering), with another 5x in improvements projected for the end of the year. SP1 will keep on improving the state of the art for ZKPs, with a goal of achieving dirt cheap, real-time proving.

We benchmark SP1’s performance against alternative zkVMs and find that SP1’s performance offers an order of magnitude improvement both in cost and latency for real world use-cases like a Tendermint light client and Ethereum block verification. Whereas previous benchmarks only included SP1’s CPU implementation, we also include SP1’s GPU implementation in these results and show SP1 is the market leading zkVM in both performance and cost by up to 10x.