ZKsync unveils Airbender Prime, a prover with real-time single-GPU proofs

ZKsync has introduced Airbender Prime, which it describes as the first Ethereum prover to demonstrate real-time proof generation on a single GPU — and now promotes it as "Ethereum's fastest prover." In an evaluation, one NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell proved 99% of 7,200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 10 seconds each (all under 12 seconds), including witness preparation.

Built for post-quantum security, Airbender Prime uses hash-based STARKs combining GKR sumcheck, WHIR polynomial commitments and BLAKE2s hashing, with L1 proofs using Keccak-256-based commitments instead of BN254 pairings. It is based on the open RISC-V standard and pairs real-time proving with a standalone verifier for independent verification. ZKsync framed the prover as a building block for Ethereum's ZK-centric roadmap. Full details in the announcement.