Proving Node v2.0.2

Proving Node 2.0.2 fixes object store persistence in the new prover stack and adds requestor priority tiers.

⚠️ READ FIRST: submit your PoVW work receipts before you stop your prover

If you shut down or recreate your prover containers without first submitting your outstanding PoVW work receipts, that work and the associated PoVW rewards will be lost.

Submit first, upgrade second. See the Migration Guide below.

Components in this release

Bento (legacy 1.x stack) and the CLI are unchanged this round and are not re-tagged.

Highlights

Object store persistence

The prover object store, which holds unsubmitted PoVW work receipts, is now backed by a persistent Docker volume, so it survives container recreation. In the Redis prover stack (prover-compose.yml), the object store (--storage-dir) now uses a named Docker volume (object-store-data) instead of the container’s ephemeral filesystem. No config changes needed pull the updated prover-compose.yml and redeploy.

Requestor priority levels

The broker now respects priority.level (0–100) on requestor list entries when ranking orders for pricing and commitment. Requestors without an explicit level default to 50. Static priority_requestor_addresses entries also get level 50.
To give a requestor top priority in your lists:

"extensions": {
 "priority": {
   "level": 100
 }
}

No broker.toml changes required. This applies automatically when using a requestor list that includes priority extensions.

Migration Guide

🛑 Mandatory: submit outstanding PoVW work receipts BEFORE upgrading

Why this matters. Each completed proving job writes a PoVW work receipt to work_receipts/{job_id}.bincode in the prover's object store. On the prover stack, that store lives on the rest_api service's filesystem under ./data/object_store/work_receipts/. Before v2.0.2 this directory was not backed by a Docker volume. This means that every work receipt that has not already submitted is lost.

v2.0.2 fixes this by adding a persistent volume, but the volume only protects receipts created after you are on v2.0.2. Receipts you are holding right now, on your current pre-2.0.2 stack, must be submitted before upgrade.

Step 1 — Submit outstanding PoVW work receipts (on your current, still-running stack)

Do this before you stop or pull anything. Your prover stack must be up so the REST API can serve the receipts.

# 1. Build a log-update proof from every unsubmitted work receipt
#    currently in the object store. Reads via the prover REST API.
boundless rewards prepare-mining

# 2. Submit the prepared log update on-chain.
boundless rewards submit-mining

# 3. Confirm there is nothing left to submit.
boundless rewards inspect-mining-state

If prepare-mining reports 0 new mining work receipts, you are clear to proceed. If it produces an update, you must submit it before continuing — receipts left behind cannot be recovered after the container is recreated.

Step 2 — Stop the stack

just prover down

Step 3 — Check out v2.0.2 and pull the new images

git fetch origin
git checkout v2.0.2

The v2.0.2 prover-compose.yml adds the persistent object-store volume:

    environment:
      STORAGE_DIR: /app/data/object_store
    volumes:
      - object-store-data:/app/data/object_store
# ...
volumes:
  object-store-data:

Step 4 — Bring the stack back up

just prover up

The compose files are pinned to the minor tags (broker-v2.0, prover-v2.0), which now resolve to the v2.0.2 images. From this point on, the object store — and any unsubmitted work receipts — survives down / up --force-recreate / redeploys.

Component releases

• Broker: https://github.com/boundless-xyz/boundless/releases/tag/broker-v2.0.2
• Prover: https://github.com/boundless-xyz/boundless/releases/tag/prover-v2.0.2

Full changelog

v2.0.0...v2.0.2

• #2025 — BM-3026: Persist Prover object store across container recreation
• #2012 — BM-3012: Enable requestor priority levels when ranking orders
• #2018 — BM-3017: Add market-price buffer to requestor auto-pricing
• #1993 — BM-2981: boundless-market: encode GuestEnv::stdin as MessagePack bin
• #1979 — BM-2951: pin cargo-binstall to v1.17.9 for rustc 1.89 compatibility

Prover Components Release

This release includes a complete bundle of Prover components:

• prover-agent: Workflow execution agent
• prover-rest-api: REST API server
• prover-cli: CLI tool

Supported Platforms

• Linux AMD64

Installation

Download the appropriate bundle for your platform and extract:

tar -xzf prover-bundle-linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd prover-bundle
chmod +x prover-agent prover-rest-api prover-cli

Verification

Verify the integrity of downloaded bundles using the provided SHA256 checksums.

Broker Release

• Broker: Core broker service for order management

Installation

chmod +x broker
./broker --help

Verification

Verify the integrity using the provided SHA256 checksum.

Prover Components Release

This release includes a complete bundle of Prover components:

• prover-agent: Workflow execution agent
• prover-rest-api: REST API server
• prover-cli: CLI tool

Supported Platforms

• Linux AMD64

Installation

Download the appropriate bundle for your platform and extract:

tar -xzf prover-bundle-linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd prover-bundle
chmod +x prover-agent prover-rest-api prover-cli

Verification

Verify the integrity of downloaded bundles using the provided SHA256 checksums.

Broker Release

• Broker: Core broker service for order management

Installation

chmod +x broker
./broker --help

Verification

Verify the integrity using the provided SHA256 checksum.

Proving Node 2.0 delivers three major improvements for provers:

• Higher profit per GPU: orders complete 1.5-2x faster on small and mid-size cycle workloads, while the head-to-head logged zero proving failures and zero slashings. Same hardware earns more and bleeds less.
• No cluster mining penalty: the Redis-backed TaskDB rewrite eliminates the ~30% drag that pushed large fleets out of the market and into mining-only setups.
• Multi-chain from one node: one prover node can now monitor and fulfill Proof Requests across multiple chains. Taiko alongside Base ships in this release.

Follow our Migration Guide to update ASAP!

Benchmarks

Base Mainnet head-to-head over 3 days: 2026-04-22 to 2026-04-24.
Both provers ran identical configs, so the differences below come from the new Bento binary.

Performance by Order Size

P2.0 finishes orders faster in every cycle bucket. The biggest gains are on small and mid-size orders, which make up the bulk of daily market flow.

Stability and Operating Costs

Highlights

Higher Profit Per GPU

P2.0 proved orders 1.5-2x faster than P1.0 in the small-to-mid cycle range, making more orders fulfillable per GPU per hour on the same hardware.
P2.0 also logged zero proving failures and zero slashings across the 3-day benchmark window. P1.0 was slashed 25 ZKC after failing to prove two orders it had locked.
Same hardware earns more and loses less.

No Cluster Mining Penalty

The Redis-backed TaskDB rewrite removes the database contention that penalized multi-machine GPU clusters. Cluster operators get more useful work out of the same fleet, so capacity can move from mining-only setups back onto the market.

One Prover Node, Multiple Chains

A single prover node can now monitor and fulfill Proof Requests across multiple chains from one configuration. With this release, that means Taiko alongside Base.

Deep Dive

Redis-backed TaskDB Rewrite

Proving Node 2.0 replaces the old TaskDB path with a Redis-backed design. This removes the database contention that penalized multi-machine GPU clusters and simplifies the proving stack around the broker and Bento.
This is the core architectural change behind the cluster-performance and per-order speed improvements in this release.

Multi-chain Support

A single prover node can monitor and fulfill Proof Requests across multiple chains from one configuration. Provers no longer need separate single-chain setups to serve each supported market.

Additional Fixes

This release also includes smaller fixes that matter to provers:

• More reliable workflow handling around guest faults, cleanup timing, and exec stats.
• Stricter private-key validation during setup so malformed keys fail earlier.
• Cleaned up insufficient-collateral and gas-balance skip paths. Regressions seen in earlier internal runs did not recur in the head-to-head.

Migration Guide

https://github.com/boundless-xyz/boundless/blob/release-2.0/migration-guide-2.0.md

Support

• Technical support: https://github.com/boundless-xyz/boundless/discussions
• Prover community: https://t.me/+xVyUwDD_ADxmODdh
• Post-release monitoring: the team will watch prover feedback closely for the first 72 hours after release

Prover Components Release

This release includes a complete bundle of Prover components:

• prover-agent: Workflow execution agent
• prover-rest-api: REST API server
• prover-cli: CLI tool

Supported Platforms

• Linux AMD64

Installation

Download the appropriate bundle for your platform and extract:

tar -xzf prover-bundle-linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd prover-bundle
chmod +x prover-agent prover-rest-api prover-cli

Verification

Verify the integrity of downloaded bundles using the provided SHA256 checksums.

Broker Release

• Broker: Core broker service for order management

Installation

chmod +x broker
./broker --help

Verification

Verify the integrity using the provided SHA256 checksum.

Boundless CLI Release

This release includes a package of:

• Boundless CLI

Supported Platforms

• Linux AMD64

Installation

Download the appropriate package for your platform and extract:

# Download and extract
tar -xzf boundless-linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd boundless

# Make executables
chmod +x boundless

Usage

# Run agent
./boundless --help

Verification

Verify the integrity of downloaded packages using the provided SHA256 checksums.

Prover Components Release

This release includes a complete bundle of Prover components:

• prover-agent: Workflow execution agent
• prover-rest-api: REST API server
• prover-cli: CLI tool

Supported Platforms

• Linux AMD64

Installation

Download the appropriate bundle for your platform and extract:

tar -xzf prover-bundle-linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd prover-bundle
chmod +x prover-agent prover-rest-api prover-cli

Verification

Verify the integrity of downloaded bundles using the provided SHA256 checksums.