SP1 Hypercube Achieves Real Time Proving with 16 GPUs
Succinct is the first team to achieve real-time proving with 16 GPUs, a breakthrough towards the Ethereum Foundation’s goal of introducing zkEVM to the L1. The latest version of the SP1 Hypercube zkVM proves 99.7% of L1 Ethereum blocks on 16 NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPUs under 12s, and 95.4% of blocks under 10s.
In May, Succinct made history as the first team to prove Ethereum in real time. This man-on-the-moon moment shifted the L1 roadmap as the Ethereum Foundation committed to using zero-knowledge proofs as its core scaling solution for 2026 and beyond. Today, we push even further beyond the horizon.
In the future, L1 validators will not re-execute blocks. Instead, they will verify succinct ZK proofs to attest for the correctness of block execution. As leading researcher Justin Drake described, this will allow Ethereum to scale horizontally, unlocking 1 gigagas per second (~10,000 TPS) which is critical to serving real-world use cases. This proof verification mechanism will also allow native rollups to interact with the base layer for minimal latency and immediate interoperability.
Real-Time Proving Is Here
This milestone is a result of relentless optimization to the arithmetization layer, GPU prover, executor speed, and cluster orchestration over the past six months.
On a random set of 954 blocks, taken between block number 23807739 and 23812008, the latest version of SP1 Hypercube delivers real time proving of 99.7% of L1 Ethereum blocks under 12s, and 95.4% of blocks under 10s on a cluster of 16 NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPUs.
But Speed Without Security isn’t Enough
SP1 is already securing billions of dollars in TVL for leading teams like Polygon, Celestia, Avail, and Mantle. But as we push forward with deploying zkVMs on the Ethereum L1, the bar for production-readiness and security gets even higher.
With our SP1 Hypercube release, we are making a big push towards combining practical safeguards for deployment with rigorous theoretical security guarantees. This comprehensive approach will give developers the confidence to trust this technology in production.
Formal Verification of RISC-V Constraints
We've formally verified the correctness of all RISC-V constraints in collaboration with Nethermind and the Ethereum Foundation. This mathematical proof of correctness sets SP1 apart from competitors who rely solely on audits or testing. Combined with our existing security investments, including rigorous third-party audits and reviews from security experts, and our new SP1-2FA feature that adds TEE protection with a single line of code, SP1 Hypercube delivers the security guarantees the Ethereum L1 demands.
Eliminating Reliance on Proximity Gap Conjectures
SP1 Hypercube is the first general-purpose hash-based zkVM to completely eliminate the need for proximity gap conjectures: mathematical assumptions that have guided security analysis of all hash-based zkVMs. The Ethereum Foundation offered a prize to resolve these conjectures, and recent research proved them false in their most general form. While other zkVMs continue to rely on these disproven assumptions, Hypercube achieves uncompromising correctness by completely removing this dependency.
Stay tuned for more
SP1 Hypercube is finishing its last round of audits and will be available open source and on the Succinct Prover Network. SP1 Hypercube will also be integrated into all of Succinct’s products, including OP Succinct and our upcoming Arbitrum integration. This will improve cost, performance, and security for all of our customers.
If you’re looking to build a ZK application with technology that is trusted by the top teams in crypto, reach out to us here.
