# Introducing Airbender Prime

Source: https://x.com/zksync/status/2110011544360607842?s=46

## Summary

Airbender Prime is introduced as the first Ethereum prover, to the authors' knowledge, to demonstrate real-time proving on a single GPU. In a single-GPU evaluation, one NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell proved 99% of 7,200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 10 seconds each, including witness preparation, and every block finished in under 12 seconds. The prover uses hash-based STARKs with BLAKE2s hashing, is built on the open RISC-V standard, and includes a standalone verifier. It also leads ETHproofs' public leaderboard on reported average proving time, GPU efficiency and cost.

## Article

Today we are introducing Airbender Prime: the first Ethereum prover, to our knowledge, to demonstrate real-time proving on a single GPU.

Built for post-quantum security, Airbender Prime uses hash-based STARKs combining GKR sumcheck, WHIR polynomial commitments and BLAKE2s hashing. Its L1 proofs will use Keccak-256-based commitments instead of BN254 pairings. Based on the open RISC-V standard, Airbender Prime pairs real-time proving with a standalone verifier for independent verification, making it a critical building block for Ethereum’s ZK-centric roadmap.

In our single-GPU evaluation, one NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell proved 99% of 7,200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 10 seconds each, including witness preparation. Every block finished in under 12 seconds.

Airbender Prime also leads ETHproofs’ public leaderboard on reported average proving time, GPU efficiency and cost, with live two- and four-GPU configurations. The competitive comparison below shows GPU-seconds per Ethereum block proof.

As AI accelerates the discovery and exploitation of software vulnerabilities, institutional finance needs security that banks and counterparties can verify independently. Requiring ZK proofs for ledger updates provides a publicly verifiable layer of protection: even a compromised execution server cannot make an update that violates the ledger’s encoded rules pass verification. Airbender Prime lowers the hardware requirements for generating proofs, making verifiable infrastructure practical for more institutions and independent operators.

We’re building a future where trust is backed by proof. Our ambition is to make independent verification the standard for finance, elevating trust and transparency across the global economy.

Airbender Prime lays the foundation for that future, with bigger announcements still to come.