The brief

Analyst view

• RISC Zero's zkVM allows developers to write Rust programs and generate zero-knowledge proofs of execution without modifying code.
• Boundless, launched as a testnet in July 2025, is a decentralized marketplace for zero-knowledge proofs that settles on any blockchain.
• The platform raised $54M across pre-seed ($2M, March 2022), seed ($12M, August 2022) and Series A ($40M, July 2023) funding rounds.

Technical approach

As reported

RISC-V architecture

Universal instruction set

The zkVM emulates RISC-V, an open-source instruction set. This allows Rust, C, or C++ programs to run unmodified inside the virtual machine.

Continuations

Boundless compute

RISC Zero uses continuations to split large programs into segments, enabling parallelization of proof generation for large computations.

Proof marketplace

Boundless network

Boundless connects applications needing proofs with prover nodes, using ZKC tokens to incentivize participation and collateralize the network.