ZKSYNC AIRBENDER: THE WORLD'S FASTEST OPEN-SOURCE RISC-V ZKVM

Summary from the TLDR Crypto newsletter

ZKsync Airbender is an open-source RISC-V zkVM that outperforms existing proving systems by 4-6x on single GPUs, delivering sub-second proofs for ZKsync blocks and averaging under 35 seconds to prove Ethereum blocks on one H100. Benchmarks show Airbender achieves 21.8 MHz base-layer throughput on H100 – 6x faster than SP1 Turbo and 20x faster than RiscZero – and runs efficiently. By slashing proving costs to $0.0001 per transfer and enabling near-real-time, consumer-grade block proving, Airbender promises to drive decentralized, fast, and low-cost interoperability across chains and support new use cases like client-side proofs and ZK-native apps.