GPU Accelerators Are the Blockchain Equivalent of Home Movers

TL;DR

• A company known as Space and Time wrote some open-source code that helps to make Ethereum waaay more efficient.

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Old News: Ethereum is pushing layer-2 protocols to adapt ZK-Proof processing

New News: There is a new open source GPU accelerator that will help these ZK-proof protocols develop and work faster. 

Did y’all get that?

Neither did we. Let’s dive in…

A few weeks ago there was a push from ETH Daddy (Vitalik Buterin) to have protocols use zero knowledge (zk) proofs - which is basically a way of communicating data, without exposing all of the details.

(Similar to how asking the question “are you over 25 - yes/no?” demands less details/specifics than “what’s your exact date of birth?”).

Point is: Zk proofs help to protect user privacy on Ethereum, and speed up a whole range of processes.

Buuuut, they also take up a BUNCH of compute power, to the point where companies have developed custom GPUs to help process things faster. 

“Cool, this is still sounding foreign” - us, while reading that.

These GPUs are the human equivalent of hiring movers when you move house. 

Sure, you can pack all the boxes and move them yourself. But unless you have a flatbed truck, there’s a good chance you’ll need movers for the bigger pieces of furniture.

These GPUs will help with the heavy lifting as far as processing/transferring data goes, speeding things up overall.

Which is neat, but what’s better is this:

Space and Time, the company responsible for creating this whiz-bang GPU and (more importantly) the code that makes it so darn efficient, has open-sourced its software!

Meaning anyone can use it/tweak it/build on it, for free.

A nice kumbaya moment for the industry!