The past decade has seen exponential growth in blockchain development, with developer growth increasing 39% annually since Ethereum's inception in 2015, and over 23,000 monthly active developers today. Developer hubs are emerging worldwide, with Asia now leading in developer share, and developer growth in ZK now outpaces this, with over a 50 percent annual growth over the past four years.
ZK looks set to fundamentally transform the majority of blockchain infrastructure over the coming year and promises to become as fundamental to modern information systems as information itself. With the focus shifting towards advanced virtual machines, this report outlines the key developments, challenges, and opportunities for ZK projects in 2025.
High-throughput chains, such as @Solana and emerging Move-based chains like @SuiNetwork and @Aptos, aim to create performant, shared state machines optimized for diverse applications. These chains focus on innovations like programmable transaction bundles and advanced network layer improvements, which enable efficient state manipulation, reduce latency, and maximize state management. Increasingly, these systems integrate ZK for efficient verifiability and enhanced scalability. However, these chains face challenges in balancing decentralization with performance while competing for developer and user adoption among rollups and other L1 solutions.
Furthermore, Solana has integrated ZK compression and ephemeral rollups to optimize state management. By reducing on-chain state by up to 5,000x, ZK compression significantly lowers transaction costs. Solana’s approach preserves its high L1 throughput while exploring modular extensions for specific use cases, such as facilitating confidential transaction flows and enhancing user experience through efficient privacy tools.
This growing adoption across high-performance chains demonstrate that ZK is not just complementary but increasingly essential for even the most advanced blockchains to maintain competitiveness and innovation in a rapidly changing ecosystem.
Virtual Machines are evolving to meet the needs of scalability and developer accessibility. Move-based VMs enable state-specific programming, promote efficient application development, and incorporate gas fee models that optimize user costs. Enhanced composability within these systems supports complex transaction execution. Comparatively, the Ethereum Virtual Machine dominates rollup ecosystems but suffers from performance bottlenecks, whereas the Solana Virtual Machine offers higher throughput but remains constrained by ecosystem fragmentation.
The emergence of zkVMs marks a transition from circuit-based approaches to general-purpose VMs, enabling scalability and attracting developers through standardized execution environments. Circuit-based approaches demand significant expertise and time, creating barriers for developers. In contrast, zkVMs allow developers to write applications in familiar programming languages like Rust and compile them into proof-ready instructions, significantly lowering development complexity. This shift enhances developer velocity and widens the range of applications built using ZK.
zkVMs use advanced optimization techniques, including GPU provers and pre-compiled operations, to balance flexibility and performance. Pre-compilation allows developers to accelerate repetitive operations like cryptographic hashing, ensuring the VM is versatile enough for general-purpose use while optimizing frequent tasks. An increasing focus on proof aggregation within zkVMs further enhances efficiency. Aggregated proofs allow multiple computational proofs to be verified as a single unit, drastically reducing on-chain verification costs. Developers can choose between aggregated or standalone proofs depending on cost sensitivity, latency requirements, or sovereignty preferences. This flexibility ensures that zkVMs can support diverse use cases, from scalable rollups to user-controlled decentralized applications.
The current leaders in this category are taking different approaches to building zkVMs, with @SuccinctLabs employing the Plonky3 proof system with the RISC-V instruction set, focusing on simplifying developer workflows and reducing latency. @RiscZero also leverages RISC-V but implements a custom proof system optimized for hardware acceleration, emphasizing high performance in proof generation. In contrast, @ProjectZKM adopts the MIPS instruction set, prioritizing modular scalability to support varying computational needs. The use of MIPS allows for integration with legacy systems while providing flexibility in proof system optimization.
With rapid innovation driving them forwards at an exponential pace, zkVMs are becoing well-positioned for mass adoption in 2025. Their ability to standardize and streamline proof generation across multiple ecosystems promises to bring a new era of trustless, scalable, and versatile blockchain infrastructure.
Emerging ZK Layer 1's introduce a new approach to addressing execution, consensus, and state availability challenges, aiming to create unified state models that ensure seamless cross-rollup communication and composability. Advanced consensus mechanisms are being developed to facilitate faster processing and better MEV capture, enabling greater efficiency in blockchain ecosystems.
As an example, @hyle_org is a network purpose-built for proof verification that avoids the inefficiencies of traditional blockchains, where all nodes redundantly re-execute computations. Instead, Hylé’s nodes natively verify proofs using optimized systems, enabling lightweight devices to perform verification tasks. This approach highlights the broader industry trend of focusing on modularity and specialization in ZK L1s. By separating computation from verification, projects like Hylé provide scalable infrastructure for provable applications while reducing computational overhead.
Such solutions integrate cutting-edge ZK proof aggregation and efficient design choices, enabling scalability without compromising decentralization, and could catalyze a shift in narrative towards more composable and interoperable blockchain ecosystems.
Ethereum continues to innovate, focusing on 'snarkifying' the EVM to reduce computational costs by enabling proof verification instead of full re-execution, making nodes more lightweight and enhancing scalability. Native rollups are shifting towards enshrined rollups for better interoperability and ecosystem coherence. The recently introduced Beam Chain proposal aims for long-term modular upgrades but faces skepticism due to its extended timeline.
Key initiatives led by the @Ethereum Foundation demonstrate the ecosystem's commitment to advancing ZK, including a $20 million bug bounty program for the formal verification of RISC-V ZKVMs and initiatives to optimize Poseidon hash functions for potential use at Layer 1. These efforts reflect Ethereum’s focus on optimizing their already robust infrastructure, critical for long-term scalability and security.
Ethereum is also exploring the concept of native rollups, with approaches ranging from precompiles for zkVMs to adopting lower-level virtual machines like RISC-V. This direction could eliminate EVM bottlenecks while maintaining compatibility and reducing technical debt. Moreover, initiatives like ethproofs.org aim to benchmark ZK proof costs and performance across vendors, encouraging a competitive ecosystem to drive further efficiency gains.
Challenges remain, including reducing latency for real-time proving and addressing complexities in developer tools. However, with substantial funding and developer engagement, Ethereum is well-positioned to lead the adoption of ZK.
Bitcoin faces significant scalability challenges, processing only about seven transactions per second. These limitations hinder its potential to serve as a global financial system. By integrating ZK, particularly through Layer 2-enabling mechanisms like BitVM and solutions like OP_CAT, Bitcoin could overcome these bottlenecks and renew its original narrative as a universal decentralized financial system.
@StarkWareLTD/@Starknet is looking to utilize OP_CAT, a proposed opcode enabling the concatenation and hashing of values in Bitcoin Script. This functionality facilitates the creation of Merkle trees, fundamenetal to STARK technology, enabling Bitcoin to verify ZK proofs efficiently. Once OP_CAT is integrated, Bitcoin’s transaction throughput could scale to thousands per second, supporting everyday micro-transactions and significant financial transfers. This scalability would unlock Bitcoin’s utility for the unbanked population, positioning it as a practical alternative to traditional financial systems.
Another mechanism known as BitVM enables Bitcoin to support off-chain computation and the creation of L2s by introducing a framework for Turing-complete logic, allowing programmable financial products, trustless cross-chain interoperability, and DeFi applications to operate on Bitcoin. Projects like @citrea_xyz and @GOATRollup demonstrate some of the first practical implementations, bridging Bitcoin with broader blockchain ecosystems and, in the case of GOAT Network, enabling native for yield generation.
By addressing scalability, enabling trustless interoperability, and unlocking programmability, ZK si propelling Bitcoin from a passive store of value to an active, productive participant in decentralized finance and global economic systems.
Privacy remains a critical application for ZK, with privacy-centric blockchains supporting use cases ranging from anonymous transactions, secure data sharing and governance, to private voting, decentralized identity systems, and secure supply chain tracking
Projects like @Aleph_Zero illustrate how privacy layers can be implemented effectively using state-of-the-art cryptographic techniques like Halo 2 to achieve sub-second proof generation and seamless integration with user-friendly wallets. These developments ensure that privacy features are accessible to end-users without compromising performance, making them ideal for cross-chain applications and enterprise solutions.
The ability to combine ZK proofs with interoperable frameworks expands the utility of privacy-preserving applications across multiple industries. With the general sentiment of many nation-states changing rapidly, ZK-powered privacy solutions are expected to become a crucial element of decentralized systems, addressing the critical need for confidentiality and trust in our digital-first economy.
Proof markets are an essential development for ZK, enabling scalable, efficient, and decentralized proof generation. These markets match the growing demand for ZK proofs with specialized infrastructure and providers, ensuring that as ZK adoption expands, the cost and efficiency of generating proofs remain sustainable.
@Fermah_xyz, a leading example in this space, exemplifies how proof markets are evolving to address these challenges, providing a universal proof generation layer that abstracts the complexity of setting up dedicated proving infrastructure. By leveraging cutting-edge hardware such as FPGAs and TPUs, Fermah enables rapid and cost-effective proof computation for diverse systems. This positions Fermah as a key contributor to driving down the costs of ZK proof generation while maintaining high performance and scalability.
As the industry progresses, proof markets will continue to evolve through vertical integration across zkVMs, hardware, and decentralized proving networks. This trend will mitigate centralization risks while enabling varied architectural approaches.
2025 promises to be the year of ZK. The global developer community’s growth, diversification, and focus on scaling solutions reflect the industry’s accelerating momentum, with innovations in zkVMs and proof markets laying the groundwork for mainstream adoption. With developer activity expanding beyond traditional hubs and novel cryptographic methods becoming accessible, ZK is positioned to redefine trust, scalability, and efficiency in our digital-first world.
The exponential growth in ZK deployments and the increasing adoption of privacy-first frameworks indicate that the industry is poised to overcome its last remaining challenges. As ZK technology becomes more intuitive for developers and end-users, its integration across sectors will accelerate, unlocking unprecedented possibilities in DeFi, governance, and beyond.
We've said it before and we'll say it again: ZK is the endgame.
