ZKsync’s Airbender Helps Prove Ethereum Blocks in Under 35 Seconds on Single GPU - Unchained

Matter Labs, the company behind the development of Ethereum layer 2 ZKsync, unveiled a new open-source RISC-V-based zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) called Airbender.

“Powered by Airbender, ZKsync OS (our new zkEVM execution environment) is proving Ethereum blocks end-to-end in under 35 seconds on a single GPU,” said the team in a post on X.

“This opens the door for truly decentralized at-home proving.”

For context, existing setups require 50–160 GPUs to achieve a 12-second proof, depending on block size.

It would also make Airbender the fastest open-source RISC-V zkVM, outperforming other leading systems by a wide margin.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Subscribe here to get these updates in your email for free

RISC-V (pronounced “risk-five”) is a free and open set of rules (called an instruction set architecture, or ISA) that tells a computer processor how to perform basic tasks like math, memory access, and decision-making.

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin has proposed replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with the RISC-V instruction set architecture as a way to improve the efficiency, speed, and scalability of Ethereum’s execution layer.