Boundless has officially activated its mainnet, transitioning its protocol for verifiable compute from beta to a live production environment to test its core thesis that blockchains can finally mirror the internet’s scaling model.
Summary
- Boundless launches its mainnet, introducing Proof of Verifiable Work and ZK Coin (ZKC).
- The network rewards provers for generating verifiable computation instead of traditional block mining.
- Over 2,500 provers and 411,000 participants joined during Mainnet Beta, with $71M raised in the Kaito sale.
In an announcement on September 15, Boundless confirmed the activation of its mainnet, marking the shift from last year’s beta into full production. The launch introduces Proof of Verifiable Work and ZK Coin (ZKC), positioning zero-knowledge computation as the engine of scale.
By design, Boundless rewards provers for generating verifiable proofs, a departure from traditional block mining and an attempt to rewire blockchain economics around computation itself.
From theoretical Breakthrough to a functioning prover economy
According to the announcement, the foundational breakthrough traces back to 2021 with RISC Zero’s creation of the first RISC-V zkVM, which demonstrated that developers could generate zero-knowledge proofs from Rust and Solidity code instead of complex, custom circuits.
This innovation made ZK technology broadly accessible, but a usable zkVM alone wasn’t enough to scale entire ecosystems. Boundless emerged to build the missing piece via a universal, decentralized protocol that could apply verifiable compute across any chain or application.
The Boundless team said this vision began to materialize in late 2024 with the launch of its Collaborative Development Program, attracting early adopters to build on the nascent network. The project hit a significant inflection point by July 2025 with the debut of its Mainnet Beta. Notably, over 2,500 provers joined the network, 411,000 participants took part in the beta, and the Kaito token sale raised more than $71 million after being oversubscribed 18 times.
The infrastructure
Boundless introduces an economic mechanism called Proof of Verifiable Work, which is fundamentally a new type of mining. Unlike traditional proof-of-work networks that expend energy to solve arbitrary puzzles, Boundless provers are rewarded for generating useful, verifiable computation.
The protocol measures the complexity of each cryptographic proof and rewards provers with ZK Coin proportional to the actual work performed. This creates a direct market for verifiable compute, aligning incentives with tangible, valuable output rather than mere hash rate.
Provers are required to stake and lock ZKC to participate in proof generation, which serves as a security deposit that ensures honest work. This staking mechanism creates a virtuous cycle: as demand for proofs grows, more ZKC is locked up as collateral, simultaneously tightening the available supply and compounding the network’s overall security. It is, effectively, a token whose primary utility is to be staked and put to work.
After launching at an all-time high of $2.13 on September 15, ZKC’s price has seen significant turbulence. It is currently trading at approximately $0.86, a decline of roughly 48% in the last 24 hours that places it about 55% below its peak, according to CoinGecko data.
