Ligero × Risc Zero: Building the Future of Private, Verifiable Compute
In Web3, three words keep colliding: privacy, scalability, verifiability. Until now, projects have managed to deliver one or two, but never all three at once. That changes today. Ligero and RISC Zero are partnering to bring privacy, scalability, and verifiability all at once to blockchain.
RISC Zero: The Foundation for Verifiable Compute
At the heart of RISC Zero’s innovation is a powerful idea: any computation should be verifiable efficiently, regardless of its size or where it runs. This principle defines the future of verifiable computing and RISC Zero’s proof system and zkVM make it possible to achieve it at scale.
Succinctness is the foundation. Traditionally, verifying a computation required re-executing it, an approach that becomes infeasible as workloads grow. RISC Zero’s pioneering efforts in recursive proof composition allows even massive computations to be compressed into small, easily verifiable proofs. This enables the verification of billions of operations in milliseconds, whether on-chain, off-chain, or within enterprise environments.
Closely related to succinctness is proof composability. Just as digital signatures can be aggregated to reduce verification costs, RISC Zero’s technology supports proof aggregation, merging many individual proofs into one compact statement of truth. This is critical for scaling privacy-preserving systems that generate large numbers of proofs across users, transactions, or compliance events. On blockchain networks, aggregation drastically reduces gas costs and validation latency, making verifiable privacy at scale both practical and economical.
Finally, RISC Zero’s system is general-purpose by design. Its zkVM introduced the concept of proving arbitrary computations expressed in standard machine code. By supporting the RISC-V instruction set, developers can write provable programs in familiar languages such as C++ and Rust, without learning new circuit languages or domain-specific frameworks.
Together, the capabilities of succinctness, composability, and generality position RISC Zero as the connective fabric of verifiable computing, compressing complex computations, linking diverse systems, and making trust portable across domains.
Ligero: Scalable, Client-Side - Privacy Without Compromise
Ligero was built on the conviction that privacy and compliance are not opposing forces, they can and must coexist. The company’s core technology enables private, programmable, and compliant computation directly on the client side, giving users, institutions, and developers full control over their data.
Ligero’s zkVM, Ligetron, is the most scalable client-side zero-knowledge proving system available today. It can handle billions of constraints directly within a browser or mobile device, delivering cryptographic privacy without compromising performance or usability. This capability has led to early adoption by Google, demonstrating the system’s ability to meet enterprise standards for privacy and scalability.
The key innovation lies in where the proof is generated. By running proofs on the client side, Ligero eliminates not only the need for centralized provers, but also the fundamental risk of outsourcing sensitive data. This approach offers the strongest possible privacy guarantees, essential for use cases involving personal identity, financial data, or regulated compliance workflows.
Ligero’s system also supports programmable compliance through verifiable credentials, allowing private transactions to remain auditable when necessary. At its core, Ligetron is a zkVM that enables developers to express zero-knowledge applications in standard programming languages—just as RISC Zero’s zkVM does for verifiable computation. This makes building privacy-preserving systems as intuitive as writing ordinary software, while embedding compliance logic directly into the proof layer. The result is a privacy infrastructure designed for enterprises, regulators, and developers alike, combining security, accountability, and self-sovereignty.
A Unified Vision: Private, Verifiable, and Composable Compute
Together, Ligero and RISC Zero deliver the first complete pipeline for end-to-end private verifiable compute: a system in which sensitive computations can be proven privately on the client side and verified efficiently anywhere in the world.
In this unified model:
Ligero ensures that proofs are generated locally, preserving confidentiality and enabling privacy-by-default.
RISC Zero verifies those proofs efficiently and enables them to be aggregated and composed with others into succinct, universal attestations.
On blockchain networks, this aggregation capability will be essential for reducing gas costs, improving verification speed, and enabling scalable privacy pools and identity systems.
By integrating scalable privacy with verifiable computation, this collaboration turns two seemingly conflicting goals, privacy and transparency, into mutually reinforcing properties. It sets the stage for enterprise-ready applications that are both confidential and provable: digital identity, private settlements, AI verification, and compliant data markets.
Looking Ahead
This partnership marks an inflection point in the evolution of verifiable computing. Ligero brings privacy and control to the edge, where data resides; RISC Zero provides succinctness and composability at the core, where trust is established.
The impact of this union is far-reaching. Enterprises can finally build applications that combine confidentiality with accountability: compliant privacy pools for secure payments, identity solutions that prove credentials without revealing sensitive information, and confidential compliance checks that can still be audited and trusted by regulators. For developers, it means they no longer need to choose between privacy, scalability, and security. They can have all three.
This partnership is just the beginning. Over the coming months, Ligero and RISC Zero will explore technical integrations, SDKs, and pilot projects that demonstrate what’s possible when client-side scalability meets on-chain verifiability.
Our shared vision is to create infrastructure that isn’t just technically advanced, but practical, usable, and trusted by the enterprises and institutions leading the next wave of blockchain adoption.
The future of enterprise-grade privacy isn’t on the horizon anymore. With Ligero and RISC Zero, it’s being built right now: scalable, verifiable, and private by design.
