October 15th 2026, 12:50 PM
ZKsync ZK token surges 6.2% on Vitalik Buterin's endorsement of Airbender Prime
Key Summary
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has praised ZKsync's Airbender Prime, a real-time Ethereum proving system, which has led to a 6.2% gain in the ZK token's value. ZKsync's system is built on hash-based STARKs and aims to lower hardware barriers to verification, with plans to implement Keccak-256 for Layer 1 proofs.
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What is Airbender Prime?
ZKsync unveiled Airbender Prime on October 13, 2026, a real-time Ethereum proving system without specialized hardware.How does Airbender Prime work?
A prover produces cryptographic receipts showing that a batch of transactions was processed correctly. Airbender Prime proved 99% of 7,200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 10 seconds each.Vitalik Buterin's endorsement
Buterin congratulated ZKsync and said the speed race for zkEVMs is definitively won. He called for formal verification to make sure provers align with Ethereum's specifications and advocated for hard limits on prover costs relative to gas prices.What's next for ZKsync?
ZKsync plans to implement Keccak-256 for Layer 1 proofs and supports multi-GPU configurations. The company also leads the ETHproofs.org public leaderboard on average proving time, GPU efficiency, and cost.Buterin's comments and the announcement of Airbender Prime have significant implications for the zkEVM field, including the planned Keccak-256 implementation and the company's response to formal verification calls.
#Ethereum#ZKsync#AirbenderPrime#VitalikButerin