Google Explores Zero-Knowledge Proofs to Scale Bitcoin and Its Identity Verification Systems

Ethereum has placed zero-knowledge proofs at the center of its long-term scaling roadmap. Meanwhile, Bitcoin requires them to natively scale, and now Google has begun exploring ZK for its identity verification systems.

What’s been missing is performant, verifiable compute infrastructure ready for mainstream use – until now. ZKM, a zero-knowledge research and development project building a general purpose zkVM, just released its biggest upgrade to-date: zkMIPS 1.0.

The project, which is a joint initiative by the Ethereum Foundation, Chainlink, and several other major crypto and Web3 firms, has also open-sourced its code on GitHub.

zkVM: All about its zkMIPS 1.0 update

Built on the mature MIPS32r2 architecture – rather than the more commonly used RISC-V – zkMIPS 1.0 delivers up to 19x performance improvements over previous versions. It’s already being used to prove Ethereum mainnet blocks via the Ethereum Foundation’s EthProofs initiative and also supporting GOAT Network, a Bitcoin L2 utilizing BitVM2 and decentralized sequencers to enable native BTC yield.

Unlike many zkVM projects focused on visibility and hype, ZKM has taken a more deliberate route: heads-down engineering with a bet on MIPS as the better long-term fit for verifiable computation – and the hard work has paid off.

With zkMIPS 1.0 outperforming both R0VM and SP1 on CPU across almost all metrics, and GPU benchmarks just around the corner, it now stands as possibly the most performant general-purpose zkVM on the market.

The 1.0 release also ships with a full toolchain, supports all major proof types (Groth16, PLONK, compressed STARKs), and integrates directly with the ZKM Proof Network.

More details here

With real-time proving on the horizon and integrations across Ethereum, Bitcoin, and emerging AI systems, zkMIPS 1.0 may be the clearest signal yet that the zero-knowledge era is no longer just coming – it’s here.

Conclusion

ZKM builds infrastructure for scalable, trust-minimized verifiable computation. Through zkMIPS – a high-performance, production-ready zkVM – ZKM enables universal off-chain execution that’s standardized, efficient, and composable.

As blockchains fragment and computation demands grow, ZKM provides the foundation for universal execution and unified liquidity across ecosystems.