Unveiling Fermah
Today, we’re unveiling Fermah, the universal proof generation layer.
One Final Boss Battle
After dedicating the last 15 years to designing and building zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), it is clear to me that we’re at an inflection point. ZKP technology is on the verge of becoming practical enough to power broad, modern applications. Yet, a final boss battle remains.
In this battle, our adversary is the complexity of proof generation.
Generating proofs is extremely resource-intensive: it requires expensive, powerful physical infrastructure. It’s a hurdle for developers to source, deploy, and maintain this infrastructure. And even if they manage to do it, most of this infrastructure is not utilized for the vast majority of time.
The underutilization of this hardware inflates the price users pay for their ZKP transactions. And beyond this, designing, implementing, and maintaining the optimal incentive structure for this infrastructure is a monstrous task in itself.
Fermah Is the Solution
With its universal proof generation layer, Fermah rises to the challenge.
The Supply Side
Fermah functions as a marketplace for ZK proof generation.
The market’s supply side consists of machines such as GPUs and FPGAs. Initially, the supply side is bootstrapped by EigenLayer Operators.
The Demand Side
Fermah can generate proofs for any instance in which ZK is used.
Fermah is credibly neutral and architected to support all proof systems. This includes zkVMs, zkEVMs, Groth16, and all other proof systems. It is optimized for cheap, fast, and reliable ZK proof generation.
The demand and supply sides are aligned with the Fermah Matchmaker.
The Fermah Flywheel
Aggregating demand from various sources allows suppliers to leverage economies of scale.
These market dynamics enable a reduction in costs for proof generation. In turn, the range of use cases that can practically leverage ZKP technology grows. This creates a flywheel that grows the aggregate demand for proofs, and hence enables further economies of scale to lower costs.
This flywheel makes the economics of ZKPs viable across a much broader range of use cases.
When combined with Fermah’s several technical breakthroughs, which we will reveal in due time, Fermah enables the first efficient marketplace for ZK proof generation.
This One's for You, Devs
If you're a developer, rather than investing time and resources into sourcing and managing infrastructure, you can focus on solving your pressing problems! Simply delegate proof generation to Fermah.
If you have yet to choose your proof system, we offer a credibly neutral testing ground for all options. And once chosen, we provide fast, cheap, and reliable infrastructure to help you build world-class products.
Whenever you need to generate proofs – whether it's for ZK rollups, ZK bridges, ZK coprocessors, ZKML projects, ZKFHE projects, or any other use cases that might leverage ZKPs – we're here to help.
If you've been intrigued by ZK but thought it was too complex to use, we might be the solution you've been waiting for!
The Backers Helping Fulfill Our Mission
Our mission is to abstract away the complexity of using ZKPs. Our vision is to make ZKPs the default substrate for all computation.
And we’ve got the right people backing us to fulfill our mission.
I’m thrilled to share that we’ve raised $5.2 million from S-tier funds that have molded the ZK space into what it is today.
The a16z CSX fund and Lemniscap contributed to our seed round.
We also had participation from funds including Bankless Ventures, Longhash Ventures, P-OPS team, Public Works, ZK Validator, Lambda Class, Daedalus, Zero DAO, Velocity Capital, and Daemon Ventures.
Beyond funds, S-tier builders also participated as angels in this round. This includes Balaji, the former CTO of Coinbase and A16z GP; Mustafa and Nick, the CEO and COO of Celestia; Sandeep, Jaynti, and Daniel, the cofounders of Polygon; Zac and Claire, the CEO and CMO of Aztec; Sergey, the CEO of Axelar; Greg, the Cofounder of Geometry; and several others.
Giants have paved the path for Fermah and we couldn’t be more excited about having many of these giants in our corner.
Join Us!
We’re embarking on an ambitious quest to reinvent computation and trust on the internet. Our ethos is to deliver with excellence and kindness. We’re a passionate team, and we’re growing. If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to check out our Careers page and apply! You can also DM Pranit, our CMO, or myself.
If you’re working on a project that uses zero-knowledge proofs in any manner, please reach out here. We’re optimistic we could improve your proof-generation experience by an order of magnitude.
If you’re a hardware team interested in participating in our network as a prover, please reach out here. It will be worth your time to be early.
And finally, we would love to have you in our community! Today, we open our Discord to the public. Come join a humble cohort of nerdy and kind ZK enthusiasts determined to beat the final boss and bring moon math to the masses.
Onwards!
