Kakarot, backed by Vitalik and StarkWare, aims to achieve real-time zero-knowledge proofs for Ethereum by the end of 2025

TechFlow news, April 29 — According to The Block, Kakarot, a startup backed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and StarkWare, has completed a working implementation of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and plans to achieve real-time ZK-STARK proofs for Ethereum Layer 1 blocks by the end of 2025. Clement Walter, CTO of Kakarot, said their goal is to reduce proof time to 8 seconds by the end of this year—faster than Ethereum's 12-second block time. The project is built using the Cairo language and provides an independent ZK stack that does not rely on RISC-V, rust-evm, or Plonky3, enhancing diversity and robustness in Ethereum's ZK verification. Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake said this would help achieve "robustness in zero-knowledge proofs." Kakarot has received $6 million in funding.