Recently, the Ethereum technology community has been discussing “Real-time Proving” (RTP for short). In simple terms, it means that we no longer need all Ethereum nodes to spend a lot of resources to “re-execute” every transaction, but instead use a cheaper and faster way to verify a small proof. However, achieving this is very difficult. Previously, even the best-performing technology could only verify about 40% of blocks within 10 seconds, and the hardware costs reached hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Now, the Brevis team's new technology Pico Prism has broken the bottleneck: they have achieved the generation of valid proof for 96.8% of the Ethereum mainnet blocks (45M gas) within 10 seconds using consumer-grade graphics cards (64 RTX 5090) that ordinary people can buy, with an average time of only 6.9 seconds, and the hardware cost has also been reduced to half that of previous competitors. This means that the Ethereum mainnet truly has the potential for significant scaling without sacrificing decentralization—transactions will be cheaper, faster, and safer.

What problem is being solved?

Currently, Ethereum generates a block every 12 seconds. Tens of thousands of nodes around the world must redo all calculations and repeatedly verify transactions. Imagine this: every time you receive a transfer notification, you have to recalculate all the bank's ledgers - it's extremely inefficient and costly, which is the current situation Ethereum is facing today.

The Ethereum Foundation has proposed a new idea: Real-Time Proof (RTP). In other words, instead of having each node rerun the transaction execution process, dedicated machines will compute a compact “proof file” efficiently. Other nodes only need to download this proof and verify it—lower costs and higher efficiency.

But the challenges are immense: the computational load of Ethereum transactions is inherently complex, requiring mathematically rigorous proofs that demand tens to hundreds of times more computation than standard execution. Therefore, over the past two years, several zkVM technology companies worldwide have been continuously attempting to reduce costs and shorten delays.

Features of Brevis and Pico Prism

Before 2025, the strongest real-time proof solution in the industry is the SP1 Hypercube from the Succinct team. It generates proofs for about 40.9% of blocks within 10 seconds on a 36M gas block, but requires 160 RTX 4090 graphics cards, with a total cost of approximately $256,000.

The Pico Prism of Brevis has achieved a 98.9% block proof generation rate within 10 seconds under the same conditions, averaging only 6.04 seconds, with costs reduced to half of the original (64 RTX 5090, total cost approximately 128,000 USD).

What’s even more impressive is that when Ethereum raises the mainnet block gas limit to 45M in July 2025, Pico Prism still achieves:

• 99.6% of blocks are verified within 12 seconds;
• 96.8% of the Blocks are generated with proof under the strict “10 seconds” real-time standard;
• The average proof time is only 6.9 seconds.

This indicates that Brevis's engineering design has made significant progress.

How does Pico Prism do it?

Pico Prism can complete zero-knowledge proofs of Ethereum blocks in a very short time, not through a breakthrough of a single algorithm, but through a systemic engineering innovation. The team restructured the entire proof pipeline, making the task division between CPU and GPU more reasonable. Lightweight scheduling and preparation work are handled in parallel by the CPU, while all intensive encryption and computation parts are pushed to the GPU, allowing each graphics card to operate at nearly full capacity. This extreme resource utilization is the core reason why Pico Prism leads competitors on the same hardware.

The more critical innovation lies in its multi-GPU, multi-machine collaborative architecture. Traditional proof systems are often limited to single-machine, single-card environments, constrained by memory and bandwidth, leading to quickly capped performance growth. Pico Prism has redesigned task partitioning and communication methods, allowing GPUs on different servers to collaborate like a pipeline. The efficiency of data being sliced, transmitted, and summarized across multiple nodes is extremely high, achieving nearly linear scalability. In other words, adding GPUs no longer just means piling up resources, but proportionally increasing speed.

All of this ultimately converges to an obvious result: real-time proof has become “democratized.” In the past, generating a proof for an Ethereum block might have required cloud-based supercomputing clusters, but now, the same task can be accomplished with an off-the-shelf RTX 5090. The success of Pico Prism is not a miracle of a single algorithm, but rather a reconstruction and industrial optimization of the entire proof process. It demonstrates that zero-knowledge proofs can be both efficient and economical, which is a key step for Ethereum in advancing towards the “real-time proof” era.

Visualization Platform Ethproofs

In 2025, the Ethereum Foundation launched a public platform called Ethproofs to showcase the real-time generation of Ethereum mainnet Block proofs by various teams. Ethproofs platform:

• Provides real-time data to publicly compare the speed and cost of proof generation by each team;
• Encourage transparent competition within the ecosystem to promote continuous breakthroughs in the industry;
• Provide block proof document download, allowing the public to verify authenticity on their own.

Pico Prism has been incorporated into Ethproofs, where you can view the proofs they generate in real-time online and even verify these documents in your browser.

The Significance for Ordinary Users

The real-time proof technology brought by Pico Prism means that the future usage costs of Ethereum will be lower, and transaction speeds will be faster. When the network no longer requires every node to run all transactions repeatedly, but only to verify simple proof documents, the on-chain congestion problem will be greatly alleviated. For ordinary users, the experience of daily operations such as transferring funds, purchasing NFTs, and participating in DeFi will be smoother, and costs will be significantly reduced.

At the same time, the popularization of real-time proof can truly make the Ethereum network more decentralized. In the past, due to the massive hardware resources and high electricity costs required to validate each block, ordinary households were almost unable to participate. However, now, Pico Prism has proven that it is possible to validate mainnet blocks in real-time using ordinary consumer-grade GPUs, which means that in the future, ordinary families will also be able to easily run Ethereum nodes at home, participating in the validation and protection of the network.

What is even more exciting is that this technology may give rise to entirely new application scenarios. For example, cross-chain transactions will become safer, without the need for additional trusted parties to intervene; mobile wallets can truly become light clients, no longer relying on remote nodes; even AI reasoning and large-scale off-chain computations can generate compact proof documents that can be easily submitted to the Blockchain for trusted verification. These new scenarios will inject new vitality into the entire Blockchain ecosystem.

How far are we from the final goal?

The Ethereum Foundation has set clear goals:

• More than 99% of block confirmations are completed within 10 seconds;
• Use hardware with a power of no more than 10 kilowatts and a cost of no more than 100,000 USD to operate;
• All code must be fully open source, allowing third parties to reproduce it.

Currently, Pico Prism is close to this target line (hardware cost of $128,000, performance reaching 96.8% of blocks meeting the 10-second requirement). The next plan of the Brevis team is to further reduce the number of GPUs to within 16, thereby fully meeting the “home-level” standards set by the Ethereum Foundation.

Summary

The Ethereum community is undergoing an important technological leap: transitioning from the traditional “executing every transaction” to “real-time verification proof.” The Pico Prism launched by the Brevis team is one of the key drivers of this critical shift. Through a multi-GPU parallel architecture design, they have achieved real-time proof of the latest 45M gas block on the Ethereum mainnet using ordinary consumer-grade graphics cards for the first time: 96.8% of the blocks can be verified within 10 seconds, with an average time of only 6.9 seconds, and the hardware cost has been reduced by half compared to previous cutting-edge solutions.

This breakthrough means that in the future, the Ethereum network can significantly scale without sacrificing decentralization and security, leading to lower transaction costs and stronger network performance. Even ordinary households can participate in blockchain verification at a lower cost. The publicly transparent platform Ethproofs, initiated by the Ethereum Foundation, is tracking and verifying these developments in real time, allowing the public to stay updated on the latest technological achievements and personally verify the real-time proof effects of various teams.

Therefore, Brevis and Pico Prism are not only technological milestones for Ethereum, but also open up new prospects for the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem, and are worth continuous attention.