Succinct completes proving pilot for Sam Altman-backed World Chain, clearing potential path to becoming ZK rollup

Succinct, the Paradigm-backed company behind the SP1 zkVM and the Succinct Prover Network, has completed a pilot proving World Chain's mainnet over a seven-day period.

The pilot, which verified every transaction and block using cryptographic proofs without rerunning the chain, demonstrated that even large OP Stack-based networks like World Chain could ultimately become ZK rollups.

"World challenged us to prove that ZK can operate at their scale," Succinct co-founder Uma Roy said in a statement shared with The Block. "By completing this pilot, we showed that the tech is production-ready, giving World a clear path toward becoming a ZK rollup when they decide the time is right."

World Chain is an EVM-compatible Layer 2 built on Ethereum and backed by Tools for Humanity, co-founded by Sam Altman. It trails only Base and OP Mainnet in activity among OP Stack-based chains, with over 5 million monthly active users and more than $250 million in TVL, Succinct noted.

"Until today, people assumed that large chains had to be optimistic rollups due to the limits of ZK," the team said. The pilot used Succinct's OP Succinct system — a lightweight integration that allows any OP Stack rollup to become a ZK rollup — and 800 GPUs to demonstrate that the ZK tech is ready for real-world, high-scale blockchain use.

More specifically, Succinct claimed the pilot demonstrated the viability of ZK proofs for World Chain, showcasing faster bridging and withdrawals by reducing finality from seven days to one hour. It also lays the groundwork for greater decentralization, allowing World Chain to eventually shift from operator-led governance to smart contract-based control, the project said, describing ZK rollups as the "end game" for scaling Ethereum.

In the months ahead, the teams plan to launch another pilot using SP1 Hypercube , Succinct’s next-generation zkVM that recently enabled real-time Ethereum proving.

In May, Succinct announced plans to launch the PROVE token as the native asset of its Ethereum-based prover network for zero-knowledge proofs. On Wednesday, Circle, which recently completed a successful IPO, said its USDC stablecoin is now live on World Chain.