ZisK reports 9.62s p99 Ethereum proving on four RTX 5090s

ZisK reported on Aug. 18 that its v1.1.0-alpha prover recorded a 9.62-second p99 for proving Ethereum blocks using four Nvidia RTX 5090 GPUs. The project followed up by reporting that 99.7% of tested blocks finished in under 10 seconds. ZisK has not published the block range, sample size, p99 calculation method, timing boundary, proof size or measured whole-system power for the run.

The Ethereum Foundation’s working standard requires at least 99% of mainnet blocks to be proved within 10 seconds and attaches additional conditions: on-premises equipment costing no more than $100,000, total power draw at or below 10 kilowatts, fully open-source code, at least 128-bit security, proofs no larger than 300 KiB and no trusted setup. ZisK’s repository is available under MIT or Apache 2.0 licenses and the project reports 128-bit security for the new result, but it has not published proof sizes or measured system power for the four-GPU run.

Nvidia lists the reference RTX 5090 total graphics power at 575 watts. Four cards therefore carry a combined GPU-only rating of about 2.3 kilowatts. At an RTX 5090 launch MSRP of $1,999, four GPUs cost roughly $7,996 before adding CPUs, memory, storage, power conversion losses and cooling. ZisK has not disclosed the full system cost or measured wall power for the configuration used in the benchmark.

Other projects have published related benchmarks. One production release reported a 9.8-second p99 on eight RTX 5090 GPUs across 7,200 mainnet blocks starting at block 24,000,000; that run used 100-bit provable security and produced proofs under 300 KiB. Reported security levels, proof sizes and timing definitions differ between results, and those differences affect direct comparison.

The Ethproofs API defines proving time to include witness generation while excluding data fetching and proof-submission latency. A p99 value calculated over a different interval can therefore measure a different operational burden. Ethproofs lists ZisK versions through v0.18.0 and shows a 16-GPU ZisK configuration, but it has not published an independent four-GPU v1.1.0-alpha p99 result.

ZisK’s release history identifies v1.1.0-alpha and describes the current line as foundational to a production release undergoing security and correctness audits. An OpenZeppelin review published in November 2025 reported 13 findings for a historical ZisK binary, including one critical and two high-severity issues; that report did not mark those findings resolved.

To evaluate the four-GPU claim against the Foundation’s latency and decentralization conditions, the following items would be required: a disclosed mainnet block set, an explicit timing definition matching the Foundation’s proving interval, proof sizes under 300 KiB without a trusted setup, measured whole-system wall power and an independently runnable release that reproduces the results. Absent those disclosures, the reported 9.62-second p99 remains provisional and subject to further verification.