Hazync Achieves Record-Breaking Validation Speed on Early Bitcoin Blocks

A research prototype called Hazync has achieved an impressive milestone in Bitcoin validation. The system uses RISC Zero's zero-knowledge virtual machine to make Bitcoin validation reusable, executing the validation program and resulting in a compact file that others can check.

The developer reports that a 1.7 MB standalone verifier checked a 226,434-byte cryptographic receipt covering the first 1,789 blocks of Bitcoin in just 27 milliseconds. However, this achievement is limited to an early stretch of Bitcoin's history, and a complete genesis-to-tip proof campaign remains unfinished.

The team estimates that it would take around 17 GPU-years of compute power to validate the entire Bitcoin chain, with capacity equivalent to about six Nvidia L40S GPUs needed to keep pace with new blocks. The developer notes that verification is cheap but proving is expensive, with prover resources being concentrated among a smaller population.