Ethereum’s quantum race takes a new turn as zkSync courts banks and Starknet weighs exit

ZkSync announced Airbender Prime, a prover that Matter Labs says handled 99% of 7,200 consecutive Ethereum mainnet blocks in under 10 seconds each on a single NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU.The announcement came five days after Starknet said it is actively considering becoming an independent layer-1 (L1) blockchain, targeting full quantum resistance in 2027.The two announcements answer the same deadline from opposite directions, since Ethereum's own target for L1 quantum resistance across execution, consensus, and data is December 2029.A prover that meets the real-time benchmarkThe Ethereum Foundation defines real-time proving as 99% of mainnet blocks proven in 10 seconds or less, which fits Ethereum's 12-second slot and propagation assumptions.ZkSync's result maps to that definition, including witness preparation, with every block finishing in under 12 seconds.Airbender Prime uses hash-based STARKs that combine GKR sumcheck, WHIR polynomial commitments, and BLAKE2s hashing, with Keccak-256-based commitments for L1 proofs replacing BN254 pairings.Nvidia rates the card at 600 watts of board power, and marketplace reporting puts it near $16,000. The Foundation's target framework a...