Fermah, the universal proof generation layer, has announced an integration with ZKsync, which will see the largest ZK rollup by proof volume, delegating a critical part of their infrastructure (proving) to Fermah. This signals the birth, and commercial viability, of a new category: the proof market.
This results in a step function improvement in ZK infrastructure to reduce cost and latency, while improving scalability and decentralization. By integrating with Fermah, ZKsync and the Elastic Network now generate proofs for their blocks on Fermah’s decentralized proving network. This setup significantly strengthens their proving stack by:
Increasing Resilience: Shifting away from reliance on a single proving entity enhances security and censorship resistance.
Lowering Costs: Efficient resource allocation and competitive pricing within Fermah’s universal proof market drive down proof generation expenses.
Enhancing Scalability: A dynamic and decentralized proving market allows ZKsync to scale efficiently without bottlenecks.
This integration is a major step toward a fully decentralized proving ecosystem, ensuring that proof generation remains both economically viable and technically robust.
Last September Fermah announced the successful closure of its $5.2 million seed round, co-led by the a16z CSX fund and Lemniscap. The round also included participation from Bankless Ventures, Longhash Ventures, P-OPS team, Public Works, ZK Validator, Lambda Class, Daedalus, Zero DAO, Velocity Capital, and Daemon Ventures.
Fermah was founded by seasoned cryptographer Vanishree Rao, who has dedicated the last 15 years to designing and building Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), and holds a PhD in Cryptography from UCLA. Vanishree was also the Lead Cryptographer at O(1) Labs – the team behind Mina Protocol, one of the earliest and most innovative ZK protocols. She has extensive experience working with cryptographic primitives including secure hash functions, advanced digital signature schemes, ZKPs, multi-party computation protocols, key exchange protocols, and program obfuscation.
While ZKP technology is slowly becoming practical enough to power broad, modern applications, the generation of proofs remains extremely resource-intensive, requiring expensive, powerful physical infrastructure. The underutilization of this hardware inflates the price users pay for their ZK transactions. Beyond this, designing, implementing, and maintaining the optimal incentive structure for this infrastructure is extremely onerous.
Fermah – which is optimized for cheap, fast, and reliable ZK proof generation – is addressing this long-standing complexity issue inherent to ZKPs, functioning as a marketplace for ZK proof generation. Fermah generates proofs for any instance in which ZK is used – whether it’s for ZK rollups, ZK bridges, ZK coprocessors, ZKML projects or ZKFHE projects. Fermah is neutral and architected to support all proof systems, including zkVMs, zkEVMs, Groth16, and all other proof systems.
Fermah aggregates demand from various sources, allowing suppliers to leverage economies of scale, enabling a reduction in costs for proof generation. In turn, the range of use cases that can practically leverage ZKP technology expands – creating a flywheel that grows the aggregate demand for proofs, and hence enables further economies of scale to lower costs. This flywheel makes the economics of ZKPs viable across a much broader range of use cases. When combined with Fermah’s several technical breakthroughs, Fermah enables the first efficient marketplace for ZK proof generation.
Vanishree Rao, Founder and CEO of Fermah, said: “This isn’t just another technical integration, it’s a real milestone for us at Fermah, and for the ZK space more broadly. ZKsync, a leader in the industry, is setting the standard for how proving should be done. It’s a bit surreal, honestly, when we started Fermah, we had this vision of making ZK proof generation seamless, scalable, and accessible. And now, having a project like ZKsync adopt Fermah’s Universal Proof Market is a moment worth celebrating.”
