Brevis, an Ethereum scaling firm, has announced a major breakthrough in blockchain performance with its new zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) technology, Pico Prism. The system successfully proved 99.6% of Ethereum blocks in real time using consumer-grade GPUs, marking a major milestone toward ultra-fast, decentralized validation.
Ethereum Scaling Reaches a New Milestone
In tests conducted in September 2025, Pico Prism proved nearly all Ethereum blocks within 12 seconds, using 64 Nvidia RTX 5090 GPUs — a setup achievable with retail gaming hardware. The technology allows proof generation faster than block production, enabling “real-time proving” (RTP), which was previously limited to expensive supercomputers.
“Brevis has achieved real-time proving of Ethereum L1 using consumer-grade hardware,” the company stated, calling it a “100x scaling leap” for the Ethereum network.
Brevis expects to achieve 99% RTP using fewer than 16 GPUs in the coming months — dramatically reducing costs for blockchain validation.
The Road to 10,000 Transactions Per Second
Currently, Ethereum validators must re-execute all transactions to verify each block — a resource-intensive process that limits speed. With real-time zk-proofs, only one prover needs to generate the proof, while all other nodes can verify it in milliseconds.
This change could allow Ethereum’s base layer (L1) to process 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) within a few years. According to Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams, Ethereum’s throughput could reach this target by April 2029 if scaling continues at its current rate.
Upcoming Upgrades and the “Phone-as-a-Node” Future
Ethereum’s upcoming Fusaka upgrade, expected in December 2025, will simplify proving by capping per-transaction gas usage and enabling more parallel processing. According to researcher Justin Drake, the update could allow every Ethereum block to be proven using a 16-GPU cluster consuming less than 10kW.
The Ethereum Foundation emphasized that zk-technology like Pico Prism moves the network closer to a “phone-as-a-node” future, where lightweight devices can securely verify the blockchain.
Decentralization, Scalability, and Security Aligned
As Ethereum evolves toward becoming a zk-powered chain, Layer 1 is expected to handle global DeFi at scale, while Layer 2 will manage lighter applications.
This development aligns with Ethereum’s long-term goal — achieving massive scalability without compromising decentralization or security.
Disclaimer
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