Too Long; Didn't Read
ZK applications are growing rapidly and are applied everywhere. We anticipate seeing ZK integrated into different tech stacks. We have already seen ZK layer1, ZK layer2, ZKML, ZKVM, ZK-Email. Developers are also building ZK Oracle, ZK data feed, and ZK database. We are on the road of ZK everything. The computation overhead brought by ZK forces developers to deploy their circuits on high-end servers. Thus we expected growing demand for cloud ZK proof infra to take developers outside these infra operation complexities. Our insights in this area are:
Proof markets and proof networks are two main approaches to get ZK dApp developers outside of infra complexities.
We anticipated a hybrid approach that combines both proof network and proof market mechanisms
Not all ZK Dapp developers are suitable for cloud ZK infra. Medium-sized projects with consistent traffic can self-host servers to cut costs.
The leaders of cloud ZK infra would be projects that have tons of ZK-proof generation demands, like leading ZKRU. They got economic incentives to do this business.
Decentralization is the main narrative in the crypto space because decentralization brings characteristics like privacy, censorship resistance, and security. ZK Proof already has some of these characteristics. The current selling point for a decentralized proof marketplace is censorship resistance.
The popularity of cloud ZK proof infra is closely tied to the quantity of ZK dApps currently in the market. While some projects initially highlight their cloud ZK proof infra as a key feature, many eventually shift their focus to different new narratives.