Performance Redefines the Possibility
Brevis, a leading zero-knowledge (ZK) proof infrastructure company, announced on Oct. 15th that its Pico Prism technology has reached unprecedented performance levels, marking a critical turning point for Ethereum’s scaling future.
According to a media release, Pico Prism has demonstrated 99.6% proving coverage in under 12 seconds and 96.8% real-time proving coverage in under 10 seconds for Ethereum mainnet blocks with a 45 million gas limit.
This achievement is seen as key to enabling the network’s transition toward base-layer zero-knowledge verification—a move essential for scaling without compromising decentralization or security. Crucially, the technology also slashes GPU hardware costs by 50%, making real-time proving economically viable for widespread deployment.
Pico Prism delivers significant improvements across all key metrics, leading to an overall performance that is 3.4x better when combining speed and cost efficiency compared to existing solutions.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Mo Dong, CEO and co-founder of Brevis. “We’ve built infrastructure that can handle what Ethereum is actually producing today. This is faster performance leading to economic efficiency that makes real-time proving viable for production deployment.”
A New Architecture for Efficiency
Pico Prism’s performance leap stems from a complete architectural overhaul. It shifts from single-machine proving to distributed multi-GPU clusters, utilizing a modular design to split the proving process into parallel phases. Heavy computation is offloaded to GPUs, while CPUs handle setup tasks, maximizing both speed and resource efficiency.
This innovation directly addresses a core scaling bottleneck: the need for validators to re-execute every transaction. Currently, over 800,000 validators independently re-run identical operations, creating massive computational waste. Pico Prism replaces this brute-force model with cryptographic proofs that can be verified in milliseconds.
Reflecting on the significance of the cost reduction, Dong told Bitcoin.com News that the previous prohibitive GPU hardware cost of $256,000 ensured that only well-funded institutions could afford it. Pico Prism’s breakthrough halves the hardware cost, accelerating Ethereum decentralization:
“Pico Prism at $128K using consumer-grade RTX 5090 GPUs brings us closer to ‘home proving’ territory where solo stakers and smaller operators can participate. This helps preserve the decentralization that makes Ethereum valuable,” Dong stated.
The Ethereum Foundation’s July 2025 roadmap set ambitious goals for zkEVM integration, including sub-10 second proving and hardware costs under $100K. Pico Prism is now just 2.2 percentage points away from meeting the real-time proving benchmark, with Brevis actively developing new features and optimizations to further lower the hardware requirements and make verifiable computing accessible to even more participants.
FAQ 💡
- What is Pico Prism and why is it important? Pico Prism is Brevis’s zkVM that enables fast, cost-efficient Ethereum block verification using zero-knowledge proofs.
- How fast is Pico Prism proving Ethereum blocks? It achieves 99.6% coverage under 12 seconds and 96.8% real-time coverage under 10 seconds for 45M gas blocks.
- How does this impact Ethereum decentralization? It cuts hardware costs by 50%, allowing solo stakers and smaller operators to participate in real-time proving.
- What does this mean for Ethereum’s future? It brings Ethereum closer to zkEVM integration, unlocking scalable, secure, and decentralized infrastructure for global adoption.
