What is Boundless?

Boundless is a universal zero-knowledge (ZK) infrastructure protocol that empowers developers to access high-throughput, verifiable compute across any blockchain. It fundamentally decouples execution from consensus—allowing applications to offload complex computation off-chain, with succinct ZK proofs delivered on-chain to maintain trust and security without redundant execution.

Boundless operates as an open, decentralized proof marketplace where developers submit proof requests, and prover nodes compete via reverse-Dutch auctions to fulfill them. Submitted proofs are aggregated and verified on-chain with significantly reduced gas costs, all while maintaining censorship resistance and strong liveness. The protocol introduces the Proof of Verifiable Work (PoVW) mechanism, which rewards provers proportionally based on cryptographically measured computational effort, using a native token ($ZKC). With each additional prover, Boundless' capacity scales, enabling expressive applications—from rollups and orderbooks to cross-chain DeFi—to run without being constrained by gas or block-size limitations.