In this episode, we spoke with Vanishree Rao, founder of Fermah, about building a universal proof marketplace designed for speed, cost-efficiency, and real-world ZK adoption. Main topics we discussed:

• The vision behind Fermah: solving ongoing hurdles in proof generation

• What defines a proof market and why universality across proving systems matters

• How Fermah matches proof requests with machines using tailored mechanism design

• Trade-offs between decentralization and efficiency—and why Fermah prioritizes the latter

• Challenges of client-side proving and how Confidential Proving Delegation (CPD) addresses them

• The tech stack behind CPD, including MPC, CIRCOM, and GPU acceleration via ICICLE

• Fermah’s roadmap: moving from testnet to mainnet and onboarding major rollups

• Thoughts on company-building, working with A16Z’s CSX, and staying lean