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Ethereum's Rollup Race: What is the 'real' zkEVM?

水多多|zkSync

2022-07-28 22:33

Read this article in 84 Minutes

Scroll, Matter Labs, and Polygon each hinted that it would be the first to bring zkEVM to market.

Original title: Ethereum's Rollup Race: What is the "real" zkEVM?

Source: Sage D. Young

The original compilation: water | zkSync

Last week, three announcements from Scroll, Matter Labs, and Polygon all had one thing in common: Each company hinted that it would be the first to bring zkEVM to market.

ZkEVM is a virtual machine that executes smart contracts in a manner compatible with zero-knowledge proof computing. This is the key to building an EVM-compatible ZK Rollup and retaining battle-tested code and knowledge gained over years using Solidity.

ZkEVMs all aspire to the same goal: to create something that feels like the Layer 1 blockchain that uses Ethereum.RollupsExperience. This means that developers should be able to port their existing smart contracts without changing code and abandoning the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) tools they are used to.

EVM, not a specific piece of hardware or software,Have a better understandingA combination of rules, standards, and software packages. When shared between different computers running similar software, the set of shared standards is merged into a network (Ethereum is one such network, though many other blockchain networks have adopted versions of EVM).

But how can all three companies claim to be the "first" to create zkEVM? The answer comes down to how each of them defines what it means to create a true zkEVM.

zkEVMs

We will not explain all the different types of aggregation in this article. For more information on this -- including the differences between Optimistic Rollups and the more advanced ZK Rollups discussed here -- you can readValid pointsAnd CoinDeskLayer 2 explainsDevice.

So far, zero-knowledge aggregation has only been applied to a few use cases -- such as sending tokens between addresses or trading irreplaceable tokens (&NBSP;NFT ) . ZkEVMs - designed to support zero-knowledge aggregation of any Ethereum smart contract - was expected to be "years away" until recently.

With faster to marketOptimistic Rollups offers many security and user experience advantages over general-purpose zkEVM. In the future, they are expected to replace Ethereum's main network as the main hub of Ethereum activity for years to come.

Competition Schedule

As for why all three teams seem to think they have the "first" zkEVM, possibly them each otherNot aware ofTheir competitors are growing at a similar pace.

When Matter Labs (zkSync) said it would be the first zkEVM to market in the first quarter of 2023, perhaps not realizing that Polygon would launch its own zkEVM last week.

Perhaps Polygon didn't realize when it announced it would be the first zkEVM to market that zkSync was poised to launch on Ethereum's main network before the end of this year - before Polyon's planned launch in early 2023.

As we all know, Cryptoland's timeline is only a projection, and we should take Scroll, zkSync, and Polygon's roadmaps with a grain of salt.

But the timeline isn't the only reason why Scroll, Matter Labs, and Polygon all claim they'll be the first zkEVM to market. Part of the disagreement boils down to how they define true zkEVM.

EVM Equivalent compatible with EVM

When it was announced last week that Polygon would be bringing the first EVM-equivalent ZK Rollup to marketFaced with criticism.According to some bigwigs, Polygon's solution is best described as EVM "compatible" rather than EVM equivalent.

So what's the difference between compatibility and equivalence?

Two of Ethereum's leading Optimists rollup, Artbitrum, and Modernism, boast that they are EVM equivalent. This means that the experience developed on Arbitrum and Modernism is 100% the same as the experience developed on Ethereum; Developers have access to all the same tools and frameworks they used to develop on the Ethereum main network, and they don't have to worry about breaking Layer 1 contracts if they port directly to the Layer 2 chain.

EVM equivalence is significant for developers because it means much less overhead and effort when moving from layer 1 to Layer 2.

Users also see the benefits of EVM equivalence. Users of EVM-equivalent chains such as Modernism and Arbitrum do not need to abandon familiar applications such as Metamask without simultaneously using a pool-specific wallet or other tool.

EVM compatibility is a looser definition than EVM equivalence. The EVM-compatible chain may not be plugged into all of the same tools and software frameworks used on Ethereum, in exactly the same way as the developer and user experience on Ethereum.

Developers may need to rewrite their smart contracts in order to port them to an EVM-compatible blockchain -- sometimes using a completely different programming language from Ethereum's native language Solidity. Even if developers are still able to write their smart contracts using Solidity, certain operations may not be fully supported by Rollup, which could cause errors or other engineering headaches.

Although users may be able to send assets back and forth between EVM-compatible aggregate and Ethereum, doing so requires a dedicated wallet rather than a Metamask.

Is the polygonal EVM equivalent?

Last week, when Polygon announced that it was bringing the first EVM-equivalent zkEVM to market, some big wigs pointed out that Polygon offers specifications that are best described as EVM-compatible, not EVM-equivalent.

On Twitter in JunepostIn, Luozhu Zhang by Scroll describes three different types of zkEVM: bytecode level, language level, and consensus level. All announced last week fall into the first two categories.

zkSync2.0

ZkSync 2.0 is a language level. Developers can write smart contracts in Solidity, butZkSync willThis code is translated into another language called Yul and then interpreted to perform all the fancy cryptography that supports zero-knowledge aggregation.

Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync, says its system is designed to provide Rollups with certain advantages - particularly in how it generates computationally intensive cryptographic proofs.

But as written above, zkEVM takes time, so zkSync may not be 1:1 compatible with every existing Ethereum tool right now, but that won't be a problem in the long run.

Scroll and Polygon

ZkEVM for both uses a bytecode level approach.

These methods completely eliminate the translator step, meaning that they don't convert Solidity code into a separate language before it has been compiled and interpreted. This means better compatibility with EVM. But even with these two, there are some differences that might make Scroll more of a "real" zkEVM than Polygon, depending on who you ask.

As Messari posted last weekA reportAs explained in, "Part of the [EVM] debate is whether EVM bytecode is executed directly or interpreted first and then executed. In other words, if a solution does not reflect the official EVM specification, it cannot be considered true zkEVM. In this definition, Scroll may be considered a "true zkEVM" rather than a Polygon."

According to Messari, "Polygon uses a new set of assembly code to express each opcode, the human-readable bytecode translation, which can make the code behave differently on EVM."

In other words, Polygon may be further away from the EVM equivalent than its main bytecode competitor, Scroll. However, Polygon would argue that it is these differences that allow it to offer a better product than its competitors.

Marketing in virtual worlds

Last week's zkEVM announcement represents an impressive technological advance, but, as cryptocurrencies have proven time and time again, even highly technical concepts are not immune to marketing distortions. (Polygon's technical team is always strong, but the marketing team is always exaggerating.)

Ultimately, though, subtle technical differences, such as those between EVM equivalence and compatibility, lie within ill-defined boundaries.

As Sandy Peng, co-founder of Scroll, said: "There is no clear consensus on any definition. [Scroll's] whole research team tends to have a certain narrative or a certain view of things, but it is by no means a certain thing. Our research team doesn't even agree on what everything means."

Even less clear (and probably less important) is who can correctly claim to be the "first" zkEVM.

"" First" is a very philosophical concept, "whether you're measuring the first announcement or the first launch, or the first implementation of the main web... It can take months or years to fix everything and debug.

In the long run, it looks like all of the zkEVM solutions announced last week - and several others we haven't even heard about - will revolve around new technologies and aggregated solutions that will make Ethereum a better experience than it has now.