Key Highlights
- Brevis’ Pico Prism achieved 99.6% real-time proving (RTP) of Ethereum blocks using consumer-grade GPUs
- The process, previously needing supercomputers, now runs on standard retail gaming processors making validation significantly cheaper
- This innovation removes the validation bottleneck, paving the way for Ethereum to achieve 10,000 transactions per second by switching to fast ZK-proof verification
- The reduction in hardware requirements makes lightweight validation practical, moving Ethereum closer to a future where users can validate the chain from a smartphone
A revolutionary step has just been taken on the path to make the Ethereum network exponentially faster and more accessible. Imagine a world where the blockchain can handle the global demand of applications and finance, not by running on massive, expensive supercomputers, but by being verified by the very same graphics card sitting in your home gaming PC. This is the reality brought about by Pico Prism, a groundbreaking new technology introduced by the Ethereum scaling firm Brevis.
In a feat that changes the trajectory of decentralized technology, Brevis announced they have achieved 99.6% real-time proving (RTP) of Ethereum blocks. This is a crucial, game-changing milestone. For years, the bottleneck in scaling blockchain networks has been the sheer computational cost required to verify every transaction. Now, thanks to Pico Prism, this costly process can be performed almost instantly using standard, off-the-shelf consumer GPUs.
Solving the Computational Bottleneck
To understand the significance of this breakthrough, we first need to look at the current validation process. Right now, every single computer acting as a validator on the Ethereum network must painstakingly re-execute every transaction in a block to ensure its validity. This requirement for expensive, dedicated hardware creates a fundamental choke point, limiting the network’s potential speed and making it harder for everyday individuals to participate fully in securing the chain.
Pico Prism, a sophisticated zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) shatters this restrictive model. Its purpose is to generate a ZK-proof, which is essentially a cryptographic receipt that mathematically guarantees a block was executed correctly. This is where the term Real-Time Proving (RTP) comes in: it means generating this complex proof faster than new blocks are being created on the chain.
In a recent test, Brevis utilized a cluster of 64 powerful, yet commercially available, Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics cards, the kind popular among dedicated PC gamers. With this setup, Pico Prism achieved its stunning 99.6% real-time proving rate in under 12 seconds. This demonstration proves that the computationally intense task of proving has finally caught up to the network’s block production speed, using affordable hardware. The new paradigm is simple: one prover generates the proof, and everyone else verifies it in milliseconds. This is a vast improvement over the current ‘re-execute everything’ structure.
The Clear Path to 10,000 Transactions Per Second
This technical achievement is far more than just a lab result; it is the catalyst for Ethereum’s most ambitious scaling goals. According to the network’s official roadmap, the future lies in validators switching entirely from re-executing transactions to simply verifying these lightning-fast ZK-proofs. This shift is the mechanism that will enable the Ethereum base layer Layer-1 (L1) to handle an astonishing 10,000 transactions per second (TPS).
Industry experts are optimistic about the timeline. Ryan Sean Adams from Bankless suggested that, maintaining a 3x scaling rate per year, Ethereum L1 could feasibly hit the 10k TPS milestone by April 2029. Furthermore, the network itself is preparing for this zero-knowledge-centric future. The upcoming Fusaka upgrade, anticipated in December, includes EIP-7825, which is designed to cap per-transaction gas usage. This adjustment simplifies real-time proving by allowing for more efficient parallel proving via “subblocks,” making it easier for multiple systems to work on the proving process simultaneously. Bitcoin security researcher Justin Drake believes that by the end of the year, several teams will be able to prove every L1 EVM block using clusters of only 16 GPUs, drawing minimal total power.
The “Phone-as-a-Node” Future
Perhaps the most exciting implication of Pico Prism is the realization of the “phone-as-a-node” future. Before this breakthrough, the dream of validating the entire Ethereum chain from a standard mobile device seemed distant, requiring too much power and too much expense. Now, Brevis has a roadmap to achieve 99% real-time proving with fewer than 16 RTX 5090 GPUs in the near future, indicating that the required hardware continues to shrink rapidly.
This isn’t just a matter of convenience; it’s about decentralization. By making validation lightweight and accessible, every user with a smartphone can potentially run a node and contribute to the network’s security, ensuring no single entity gains too much control. As Mike Warner put it, “The phone-as-a-node future just got real.”
This transformation solidifies Ethereum’s identity as a zk-chain. The ultimate vision is a tiered system: the Layer-1 network will act as a robust, secure engine for global decentralized finance (DeFi), running huge blocks at 10,000 TPS, secured by nodes that can operate on a phone. Meanwhile, Layer-2 solutions will handle all the other diverse applications, benefitting from the massively scaled foundation below them. This represents the holy grail of blockchain technology: achieving massive scalability without having to sacrifice the core principles of decentralization or security. Pico Prism is the key that has just turned the lock on this future.
