Space and Time Releases Sub-Second ZK Prover under Open Software License 

Summary:
• Space and Time says proof of SQL is orders of magnitude faster than zkVMs and coprocessors, and is the first ZK prover that runs sub-second. .

Space and Time (SxT), the Verifiable Compute Layer for AI x Blockchain, today released Proof of SQL, a high performance zero-knowledge prover for processing data, on GitHub. Proof of SQL is a novel ZK proof developed by SxT, which cryptographically guarantees that SQL database queries were computed accurately against untampered data. Using Proof of SQL, developers can compute over both onchain and offchain datasets in a trustless manner, proving the result back to their smart contract just-in-time during a transaction to power more sophisticated DeFi protocols with data-driven smart contracts.

“Space and Time is thrilled to lead Web3 into a new era of data-driven smart contracts and the next generation of DeFi,” said Jay White, PhD, Co-Founder and Head of Research at SxT, and the inventor of the Proof of SQL protocol. “Our team pioneered sub-second ZK proofs so that smart contracts and AI agents can ask questions about a chain’s activity, as well as offchain data, and receive back trustless SQL query results onchain during a transaction without having to wait for 30 minute proof times.”

Proof of SQL was released in alpha to a select group of SxT customers in August. With today’s release on GitHub, the protocol is now available to the public. Community members can run trustless queries on SxT on the Space and Time Studio, and developers can download the repository directly from GitHub. 

Proof of SQL is the first ZK prover that runs sub-second. In the latest benchmarks run by the SxT cryptography team, the protocol can execute analytic queries over 100k-row tables in less than a second on a single GPU, and can aggregate over millions of rows of indexed data within Ethereum block time on a single NVIDIA T4.

Proof of SQL offers a significantly more performant architecture for processing large volumes of data than generalized zkVMs and co-processors. While generalized zkVMs offer an extensible solution for arbitrary computations, data processing is slow to prove.

Proof of SQL can be integrated with these zkVMs to provide verifiable source data that arbitrary code can be executed over. Space and Time encourages and invites contributions from the community, as well as other ZKP engineering teams to collaborate in the repo. The prover can be integrated into any SQL database (such as Google BigQuery), centralized or decentralized, and is already securing some of the most prominent Web3 apps, financial institutions, and enterprises.

About Space and Time

Space and Time is the verifiable compute layer for AI x blockchain that joins tamperproof onchain and offchain data to deliver enterprise use cases to smart contracts and LLMs. Space and Time has developed a novel cryptography called Proof of SQL that allows developers to connect analytics directly to smart contracts, opening up a wealth of powerful new use cases and business logic on blockchain technology. Space and Time is built from the ground up as a multichain data platform for developers in financial services, gaming, DeFi, or any project requiring verifiable data across enterprise, blockchain and AI.