On July 10, 2025, Succinct described how they ran a 7-day pilot on World Chain’s mainnet. The goal: prove that zero‑knowledge validity proofs can work at scale on a large blockchain like World Chain • WORLD CHAIN: is a Layer‑2 built using the OP Stack, backed by Sam Altman’s World Foundation (creator of World ID), focusing on giving real human users rather than bots access to crypto via its identity protocol. • KEY TECHNOLOGIES AND PLAYERS: 1) OP Succinct: Succinct’s tool that lets rollups built on the OP Stack become ZK rollups (validity-proof-based rollups). 2) SP1 and Kona: SP1 is a fast zkVM; Kona is a Rust-based implementation of the OP Stack chain logic. Together, they enable efficient proof generation and verification. 3) The pilot involved 800 GPUs proving each transaction and block without re-running the chain a test of real-world scale • WHAT IT PROVED: ° Feasibility at scale: Even a busy chain like World Chain can run ZK validity proofs reliably and continuously for a full week ° Faster finality: World can cut withdrawal and confirmation times from ~7 days (typical for optimistic rollups) to under 1 hour using OP Succinct ° Lower cost per transaction Cost was roughly $0.0102 per tx during the pilot, with expected further reductions from future upgrades like SP1 Hypercube ° Greener decentralization options: Validity proofs let World Chain potentially move away from single-entity control to smart contract based governance, boosting security and decentralization • WHY IT MATTERS: Think of it like this... ° Layer‑1 chains (e.g. Ethereum) are settlements; Layer‑2 rollups bundle transactions to scale. ° Optimistic rollups are common, but slow to finalize since they wait for challenges. ° ZK rollups, on the other hand, use cryptography to confirm correctness instantly. World Chain, with about 5 million users and about $250-475M TVL, showed that even big networks can make the switch to ZK rollups with massive speed and cost advantages without disrupting users. • SUMMARY TABLE: Before using ZK via OP Succinct, World Chain used optimistic rollups, which meant finality times were around 7 days. After the upgrade, finality can now happen in under 1 hour. Previously, the cost per transaction depended on the specific rollup and was generally higher, but with OP Succinct and ZK proofs, the cost is about $0.01 per transaction and continues to decrease. In the old model, disputes were handled through multi-step fraud proofs, which required waiting periods. With ZK, these are replaced by automated cryptographic proofs that instantly verify correctness. Finally, governance used to be operator-led, but with this new setup, control can shift to smart contract based governance, which is more decentralized and transparent. • WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: Real users benefit: Faster withdrawals and more user‑friendly experience. Cheaper infrastructure: World Chain pays for proofs when needed, not always. Crypto building blocks: Tools like OP Succinct and SP1 make advanced ZK accessible to many blockchains. It's a real-world test showing that a major blockchain project (World Chain) can upgrade from optimistic rollups to full ZK rollups using Succinct’s tools. This unlocks faster transaction finality, lower costs, and stronger decentralization and it worked robustly over a full week on production. Great news for anyone just starting to learn about crypto scalability and zero-knowledge tech! gProve