How to easily grasp the market hotspots, technological trends, ecosystem progress, and governance dynamics happening in the Web3 industry? The "Market Insight" column launched by Web3Caff Research will delve into the front line to explore and filter current hot events, and provide value interpretation, comments, and principle analysis. Looking beyond the phenomenon to its essence, immediately follow us to quickly capture the front-line market trends of Web3.
Author: wuyue.eth, Web3Caff Research Researcher
Cover: Typography by Web3Caff Research
Word Count: Over 3000 words
At a critical period of blockchain and artificial intelligence integration, Nexus Layer1 emerges as a new generation of infrastructure project. The project innovatively designs the blockchain protocol as a "Planetary-scale Blockchain Supercomputer", and through its zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) core technology, is committed to building the basic infrastructure of a "verifiable internet" (for a more in-depth understanding of Nexus Layer1's operating mechanism, it is recommended to read: Market Insight: Can Hybrid Execution Architecture and "Planetary-scale Computing Network" Drive a New Revolution in Smart Contract Computation Standards? Discussing Nexus's Layer1 Blockchain Launch). Its technical architecture presents three distinct characteristics: first, by integrating global distributed computing resources, it provides verifiable computing services for data-intensive scenarios such as AI training and inference; second, it adopts an innovative "universal proof" system that transforms complex blockchain state verification into efficient and verifiable mathematical proofs; lastly, it emphasizes the network's universal accessibility, significantly lowering participation barriers. With a series of technological breakthroughs successively achieved since March 2025, especially the successful deployment of Testnet III on June 24th, the project has officially entered the final sprint stage before mainnet launch.
In early March 2025, the core computing engine zkVM ushered in a major upgrade to version 3.0. It is worth noting that this upgrade is not a simple performance optimization, but a comprehensive innovation from the underlying architecture to development tools. According to the technical details disclosed by Nexus founder Daniel Marin on his X platform account, the new version achieved approximately 1000-fold performance leap through innovations such as improving proof system algorithms, optimizing compiler chains, and reconstructing memory models. Simultaneously, the accompanying 130-page formalized specification document attempts to provide developers with a more rigorous technical reference. Notably, the project team also simultaneously released a detailed end-to-end benchmark testing report covering scenarios from simple smart contracts to complex AI model inference. Actual deployment results demonstrate that the upgraded platform can support larger-scale and more complex distributed computing tasks, particularly showing unique advantages in scenarios like AI model parallel training.
