Gevulot Sets Firestarter Mainnet Launch on July 15, Explains ZK Endgame Approach

General

Gevulot,
a
purpose-built
L1,
is
launching
the
first
shared
prover
layer
optimized
exclusively
for
zero-knowledge
(ZK)
proof
generation
and
verification,
starting
with its
mainnet
prover
network,
Firestarter,
going
live
on
July
15.
Whitelisted
projects
will
receive
public
good
access
to
the
mainnet.
Gevulot
also
provides
an
in-depth
explanation
of
ZK
Endgame
and
its
approach
to
ZK,
to
ultimately
bring
the
compute
and
cost
overhead
of
verifiability
to
near
zero.

The
Gevulot
Devnet
is
currently
a
free
public
good
testnet
for
registered
users
and

Galxe
community
participation
is
encouraged.
Interested
developers
can

start
offloading
provable
compute
or
start
benchmarking
proof
systems
to
enjoy
production-ready
proof
generation
to
offset
their
existing
overhead
costs.
As
Gevulot
scales,
organizations
interested
in
running
prover
nodes
can

apply
here
for
the
ZkCloud
compute
network,
which
currently
has
a
pipeline
of
over
10,000
CPUs
and
GPUs
which
meet
institutional
requirements.

Gevulot’s
Approach
to
ZK
Endgame

The
Gevulot
team
believes
zero-knowledge
proving
will
characterize
distributed
systems
in
the
near
future.
Zero-knowledge
proofs
enhance
a
blockchain
network’s
scalability,
compatibility
with
other
networks
and
applications,
and
privacy.
Their
purpose
is
validating
computations
and
improving
transaction
integrity
without
revealing
additional
information.

A
growing
niche
in
the
industry,
including
Gevulot,
believes
today’s
infrastructure
is
not
ready
to
embrace
ZK
proving
yet.
On
the
contrary,
most
applications
rely
on
permissioned
proving
from
a
single
prover,
drifting
away
from
the
fundamental
definition
of
a
decentralized
ecosystem,
which
should
embody
credible
neutrality
and
censorship
resistance.

Gevulot
aims
to
solve
the
issues
of
present-day
proving
infrastructures
and
accelerate
zero-knowledge
proving
adoption
by
building
the
ZkCloud,
a
decentralized
compute
network
optimized
for
offloading
arbitrary
provable
compute.
This
solution
is
slated
to
help
unlock
the
near
limitless
compute
capacity
on
blockchains
via
decentralized
zero-knowledge
proofs,
which
would
represent
the
apex
of
distributed
systems
evolution.
In
other
words,
it
would
be
the
zero-knowledge
endgame
and,
as
the
team puts
it
on
their
blog, “nothing
short
of
all
the
world’s
compute
being
verifiable
or
as
close
to
that
as
is
allowed
by
physics.”

Zero-knowledge
proving
is
rapidly
evolving,
drastically
reducing
the
cost
of
verifying
the
accuracy
of
a
third
party’s
computation.
This
solves
the
“cost
of
verifiability”
dilemma,
which
has
bothered
industry
experts
since
the
dawn
of
distributed
systems
technology.
It
also
means
we
can
rely
on
the
performance
and
redundancy
characteristics
of
trusted
computation
without
requiring
trust.

The
ZK
Endgame
aims
for
the
compute
and
cost
overhead
of
verifiability
to
approach
zero.
In
other
words,
to
reach
its
goal,
zero-knowledge
proving
must
also
bring
the
required
compute
time
to
zero,
and
not
only
its
financial
costs.

Reaching
absolute
zero
costs
of
verifiability
is
most
likely
unachievable.
However,
getting
as
close
as
possible
to
zero
for
verifiability
and
compute
time
may
be
possible
by
getting
ZK
proving
on
a
trend
line
that
involves
several
new
breakthroughs
in
cryptography,
hardware,
and
other
essential
metrics,
such
as
bandwidth
and/or
electricity
costs.

Gevulot
is
building
ZkCloud
to
take
zero-knowledge,
proving
on
a
trend
line
to
the
ZK
Endgame
while
pushing
technological
frontiers.
The
project
considers
itself
a
contributor
to
reaching
the
pinnacle
of
zero-knowledge
proving
in
distributed
systems.
As

Teemu
PÃ¤ivinen,
CEO
and
Co-founder
of
Gevulot, describes
it:

“In
our
vision,
we
are
the
compute
portion
of
this
future
cloud
and
world
computer.
We
believe
other
teams
will
provide
the
data
storage
and
other
aspects
of
this
cloud.
I
don’t
think
it’s
going
to
be
a
single
monolithic
service.
The
only
realistic
chance
of
getting
there
is
to
utilize
zero-knowledge
proofs.
Our
short-term
goal,
which
we’re
very
much
executing
on
currently
and
very
excited
about,
is
just
lowering
the
cost
considerably
and
then
letting
the
cryptographers
work
their
magic
to
make
things
faster.”

ZkCloud
is
redefining
cloud
infrastructure
with
a
product
that
is
decentralized,
censorship-resistant,
and
permissionless
while
providing
universal
access
for
proving.

About
Gevulot

Gevulot
offers
the
first
shared
prover
layer
for
the
modular
stack,
with
internet-scale
ZkCloud
compute
optimized
for
zero-knowledge
proofs.
It
is
designed
to
aggregate
proving
workloads
from
across
the
blockchain
industry,
improving
economics
for
all
participants
and
unlocking
unprecedented
use
cases.
Behind
Gevulot
is
a
veteran
team
of
builders
led
by
the
founder
of

Equilibrium
Labs,
a
group
renowned
for
their
protocol
level
R&D
on
projects
such
as
Starknet,
Solana,
Aleo,
Avail,
and
other
significant
industry
projects.

Gevulot’s
mainnet
prover
network,
Firestarter,
will
launch
as
a
public
good
on
July
15.
The
project
has
a
growing
list
of
prestigious
partners,
including
Espresso,
Gelato,
Radius,
HylÃ©,
0G
labs,
AltLayer,
ZKM,
Snapchain,
Horizen
Labs,
Karnot,
Airchains,
Zeeve,
and
over
50
more
to
be
announced.
Their
mission
is
to
contribute
to
the
ZK
Endgame.
Interested
teams
can
contact
Gevulot
now
for
a
potential
grant.

Moreover,
Gevulot
enjoys
the
support
of
recognized
VC
backers
with
the
project
raising
$6
million
in
a
seed
round
in
mid
2023.
They
include
lead
investor
Variant
and
other
industry-leading
brands,
such
as Supranational, P2P.org, Staking
Facilities, RockawayX
Infrastructure,
Marc
Boiron
(Polygon
Labs),
Shumo
Chu
(founder
of
Manta
Network
&
NEBRA),
Calvin
Liu
(CSO
of
Eigenlayer),
George
Lamberth
(EIR
dao5),
and
Mo
Dong
(founder
of
Celer
&
Brevis
Network).
Additional
funding
is
still
to
be
announced.

Other
important
milestones
in
Gevulot’s
roadmap
include
the
release
of
an
incentivized
compute
network
in
Q3
of
2024
and
the
ZkCloud
mainnet
launch,
which
should
occur
by
2025’s
first
financial
quarter.