The recent SoK paper "Understanding zkVM: From Research to Practice" provides the first rigorous cross-system benchmark of zkVMs using a unified three-layer framework (ISA → Execution → Proving).
> Appreciate the authors' work in establishing fair, reproducible comparisons across the zkVM ecosystem.(I also see there were lots of progress during his work)
> A few observations from Ziren's(
@ProjectZKM ) perspective:
>> Ziren takes a deliberate architectural bet on MIPS32, prioritizing instruction regularity and constraint uniformity over RISC-V ecosystem convenience (zkVM level instruction efficiency). This is a long-term design choice, not an oversight. (PS. I also want to highlight, Ziren supports Golang, I will present how to prove Keeper
@go_ethereum in EthCC.)
>> The benchmark confirms our expectations: competitive VM proving speed, complete end-to-end pipeline (VM -> recursion -> Groth16), and transparent setup via FRI.
>> It also surfaces areas we are actively improving - VM proof size and prover throughput remain behind some competitors.
Paper:
eprint.iacr.org/2026/525.pdf
#zkVM #ZKP #MIPS #Cryptography