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Overview

Increasing number of developers are looking to leverage developments in ZK cryptography to build scaling solutions (validity rollups), coprocessors, bridges, gaming engines, payment apps, identity solutions and more. However, generation of ZK proofs, like PoW mining, is energy and compute-intensive. It requires powerful machines which ultimately leads to high costs and/or poor response time for users.

Kalypso is a circuit-agnostic ZK proof marketplace. It connects users who wish to delegate the generation of ZK proofs to specialized hardware operators who wish to increase resource efficiency. A competitive market motivates hardware providers to innovate, reduce costs and increase the speed of proof generation. They may achieve this by securing access to specialized hardware (FPGA, ASICs), fine-tuning their software, securing affordable energy and cheap colocation facilities.

Each circuit has its own market on Kalypso. Such markets can be added permissionlessly. Hence, applications built using any proving system can use Kalypso, provided hardware providers show interest in participating in the market.

An orderbook-based exchange is used to match requests, which specify the maximum time within which they desire the proof and the maximum price that they are willing to pay for it, against quotes from different hardware providers. The matching engine for Kalypso is deployed on an Oyster TEE node. This not only enables the matching and cancellation of orders with very low-latency, but also provides Kalypso the unique ability to support use cases involving private inputs.

More information on the Kalypso protocol, and on integrating Kalypso to outsource proof generation as an app developer can be found at the links below:

Note that if an existing market doesn't suit the application's requirements, a new market has to be created before requests to generate proofs can be made.

Advantages​

Key benefits of using a permissionless prover market include:

  1. Fast proofs for a smooth user experience: Client-side proving can stall devices and lead to awkwardly long wait times. Outsourcing proof generation to a specialized prover network allows users to have smooth and seamless interactions with the application.

  2. Higher resource utilization for hardware providers: Operating a prover hardware dedicated to a single network can result in long idle times and poor utilization rate. Higher resource efficiency can be achieved by aggregating and serving more requests and amortizing fixed costs over several users, protocols and networks.

  3. Censorship-resistance for protocols: Provers may refuse to generate proofs for certain interactions or may go offline (intentionally or otherwise) and pause the protocol. Decentralizing the prover infrastructure improves liveness and censorship-resistance properties of the protocol.

Join the Network​

The Kalypso network may consist of different kinds of hardware:

  1. Servers (like Amazon EC2)
  2. Servers with confidential computing support (like Intel SGX/TDX, AWS Nitro Enclaves)
  3. GPUs (like RX 7600s)
  4. GPUs with confidential computing support (like NVIDIA H100s)

There is no standard hardware requirement to join the network as each circuit (and consequently every market) may have different computational requirements. For example, a market catering to a payment app with private inputs may need a TEE-enabled server. However, proving the blocks of a ZK rollup wouldn't need TEE support but would very likely require the use of GPUs.

As a permissionless network, anyone can join as a node operator on Marlin. To prevent sybil and DoS attacks wherein hardware providers quote unrealistically low proving times to win bids, hardware providers are required to post collateral. The staked tokens are susceptible to slashing if the response time guarantees they specify when registering on a market aren’t met. As missing to send proofs by the quoted deadline may have different implications for every application (and thus market), there's no standardized staking requirement.

Hardware providers are, therefore, required to be active participants in Kalypso. They might have to keep up with changing competitive dynamics, hardware and software updates, introduction of new markets and more. Further information on how to join Kalypso is available at the link below: