What is Boundless?

Boundless is a universal protocol that empowers ZK miners to generate zero-knowledge proofs that any blockchain can verify. A built-in marketplace matches demand from all ecosystems to miners who can supply verifiable compute.

Participants include:

Whenever a proof is accepted the miner earns twice: the requester’s fee and a second payout in $ZKC, the native Boundless token. $ZKC is issued every epoch by the protocol in direct proportion to the verifiable work each miner contributes.

Proof of Verifiable Work

Boundless introduced Proof of Verifiable Work (PoVW) - a first-of-its-kind incentive mechanism that pays miners exactly for the verifiable compute they deliver. While classic Proof-of-Work relies on probabilistic hash races, PoVW measures the RISC-V cycles sealed inside each ZK proof and rewards miners accordingly. The meter is tamper-proof and non-replayable, so rewards are deterministic.

How PoVW works

  1. Every Boundless proof has an immutable tag that records the number of cycles proven, with a unique nonce to prevent replay. The tag’s integrity is ensured by the proof, so neither the miner nor the requestor can tamper with it.
  2. At the end of every epoch, the PoVW contract totals all cycles finalized in that window. The entire calculation happens on-chain and can be audited by anyone.
  3. A fixed amount of $ZKC (Boundless’ native token) is minted for the epoch and distributed pro-rata to cycle share (e.g., a miner who delivered 2% of total cycles, receives 2% of the mint).

Miners Earn Double on Boundless

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Marketplace fees deliver immediate cash flow; $ZKC scales with proof complexity, giving heavier jobs a bigger payout. The split lets you balance near-term earnings with long-term upside.

Finetuning Your Strategy

Boundless gives miners full control, with extensive configuration options and complete source code to modify as you wish. Every prover node runs an embedded service called the Trader. The Trader acts as your onchain market analyst: