Blockchain research organization NEBRA is launching what it calls Universal Proof Aggregation, a technique that allows multiple, separate zero-knowledge proofs to be combined into a single, compact proof to save on blockchain verification costs.
The system is going live on Ethereum 
ETH -2.80% in an attempt to drive down the high costs of proof settlement. Zero-knowledge technology, a way of verifying without revealing information, is used across the blockchain sector — in places like zkVM, zkRollups and zk coprocessors.
“Low throughput and the high cost of verification are major obstacles preventing applications from taking full advantage of ZKP technology,” Shumo Chu, co-founder and CEO of NEBRA, said in a statement.
Zero-knowledge technology can be costly to implement due to the complexity of the computation involved. According to one estimate on the Ethereum.org blog, verifying a zk-SNARK proof for zk-rollups on Ethereum costs around 500,000 gas. These costs are ultimately passed down to users who pay rollup operator fees to subsidize the computational costs.
By combining various ZK proofs looking to settle their batched data onchain, the NEBRA aggregator can reduce costs by up to 10 times less than had something like a ZK rollup been verified alone, a NEBRA spokesperson told The Block. Worldcoin, Brevis and Altlayer were early users of the universal proof aggregator.
“Think of Nebra UPA like a carpool for zero-knowledge proofs on the blockchain. Just like with Uber Share, the more people you pick up, the more everyone saves,” they added. “And since UPA is open and universal, it can gather proofs from many different sources quickly, reducing the time needed to reach economy of scale, unlike other app-specific or VM-specific aggregation that depends on the intrinsic volume within their perspective ecosystem.”
NERBA previously raised $4.5 million in pre-seed and seed round funding, led by Nascent and Bankless Ventures with participation from a16z’s Crypto Startup Accelerator.
