Cross-chain app Wormhole continues zero-knowledge push with AMD collab

The Wormhole team hopes to minimize trust assumptions in its protocol through zero-knowledge proofs

article-image

Wormhole and Adobe Stock modified by Blockworks

share

AMD, one of the world’s biggest semiconductor makers, is providing Wormhole with hardware and advice as the interoperability app seeks to grow its zero-knowledge infrastructure. 

Wormhole announced the partnership Monday in a blog post. It previously said the AMD hardware accelerators would be sourced for Wormhole contributors, and Wormhole will develop “light-client” integrations that run zk proofs with fewer resources. 

Wormhole is a protocol for moving assets across more than 30 different blockchains. Last fall, investors valued Wormhole at $2.5 billion in its eye-popping $225 million fundraise.

Read more: Wormhole garners whopping $2.5B valuation as new unit emerges 

Transactions on Wormhole are approved by a mutisig where 13 of 19 signers must agree on the contents of a message before it can be sent. In a Jan. 31 blog post, Wormhole said it hoped to decentralize its verification layer with zk technology. 

Zk proofs allow the contents of a message to be proven true without revealing the message’s contents. In the context of Wormhole, this could take the form of verifying the amount of crypto moving from one wallet to another without revealing details about the transaction itself.

However, zk proofs are highly energy intensive. 

In a blog post, AMD director of product Hamid Salehi said the firm’s FPGA semiconductors could help Wormhole scale its zero-knowledge infrastructure. It would do so through parallelization, whereby computing processes are carried out simultaneously instead of one by one. 

Omer Shlomovits, founder of the zk hardware startup Ingonyama, said in a Telegram message that the FPGA accelerator cards being added to Wormhole — U55C and U250 — are well-suited for scaling zk applications cost effectively.

Read more: There’s too much trust in zero-knowledge tech

“AMD [is] at the forefront of [zk] adoption in the category of hardware providers, so I am sure they will contribute immensely to [Wormhole],” Shlomovits added. 

AMD is among the ten largest chip companies, boasting roughly $265 billion in market capitalization. Its stock price has more than doubled in the past year, buoyed lately by its push into AI. 


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates.png

Research

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) represent low-hanging fruit in a massive market ripe for Web3-driven disruption. The global CDN market was valued at ~$28B in 2024, and is projected to surpass $140B by 2034, (18.75% CAGR) underscoring the immense demand for efficient content delivery.

article-image

Sponsored

Injective is not waiting for the future of finance. It is bringing it directly to us, today.

article-image

Bitcoin has been bullish for nearly 1,000 days

article-image

Robinhood announced that it’s building an L2 and also plans to launch staking for US users

article-image

“We’re not really doing anything controversial,” said co-founder Zak Folkman at Permissionless last week

article-image

Why equities are more stable than in past decades, plus advice from Peter Lynch

article-image

As Permissionless speakers talk on-chain RWA potential, tokenized stock platform Dinari secures FINRA broker-dealer approval