ZkSync: A glimpse into the future of Ethereum

水多多|zkSync

2022-11-11 14:38

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Only time will tell who made the right bet to scale Ethereum.

Original title: "ZkSync: A glimpse into the future of Ethereum"

Original author: Shui Duoduo|zkSync

Key Takeaways:

Compared to other generic L2 due to lack of smart contract support, Low adoption of ZkSync 1.0 makes rollups have minimal utility outside of token transfers and exchanges.

The Matter Labs team is aiming to launch their alpha zkEVM on mainnet on October 28th, making them the first to launch an EVM-compatible general intelligence Contract ZK rollup team.

The first team to launch zkEVM could gain a significant first-mover advantage, especially if the spike in Ethereum transaction fees pushes users away from the base layer.

The zkSync team believes they have made a major breakthrough in reducing hardware requirements, becoming an active participant in the attestation process.

The ultimate goal of zkSync is the will driven by their proof technology and thriving L3 ecosystem, while maintaining the goal of scaling Ethereum as a focus.

Launched by Matter Labs in 2020, ZkSync 1.0 is a zero-knowledge rollup (ZKR) that relies on the security of Ethereum, primarily for Token exchange or transfer. It does not support smart contracts, so the products available on zkSync 1.0 today are limited, resulting in low adoption relative to other Ethereum scaling solutions. The Matter Labs team hopes to address this by launching their alpha zkSync 2.0 (a zkEVM) on mainnet on October 28th. Additionally, Matter Labs announced that it will launch L3 on testnet in Q1 2023.

ZkSync 1.0

Despite the lack of support for smart contracts, ZkSync 1.0 has managed to attract Over $54 million in funding. Most of the TVL on zkSync is in ETH and various stablecoins, since the network except Token There is a lack of utility beyond transfer and exchange, and NFT minting has failed to gain significant traction. Many users with pooled funds may be prepared for the inevitable Token Airdrop in preparation, which should capture future growth in the zkSync economy. Optimism and Arbitrum, two of the most popular Ethereum scaling solutions, are seeing more user activity given the fact that they already support smart contracts. While daily transaction volume is not a perfect metric, it provides some insight into the amount of activity that zkSync misses due to not yet supporting smart contracts.

All funds on zkSync are secured in smart contracts on Ethereum, computing and storage are performed off-chain. Transactions are rolled into a batch, settled on Ethereum to amortize gas costs across all L2 traders, and then settled simultaneously. All state changes that occur in the rollup are published to Ethereum as calldata along with a SNARK proof that the state change is valid. Call data posted to Ethereum enables anyone to reconstruct the L2 state and is much cheaper than storing the entire L2 state on the EVM. Compared to the Ethereum base layer, SNARKs are able to verify large batches of transactions in a cost-effective and timely manner (instant confirmation and 15-minute completion), and provide zkSync with enormous transaction throughput (e.g. ~2,000 and ~15 tps respectively).

ZKR offers many advantages over other scaling architectures. ZKR inherits the security of Ethereum, while sidechains like the Ronin network are subject to vulnerabilities in their own validator set. ZKR also does not rely on fraud proofs like Optimism or Arbitrum, where honest third parties must monitor blocks for malicious transactions and require a 7-day challenge period to delay fund withdrawals. Additionally, funds on ZKR can always be retrieved by their rightful owners regardless of the state of the validator set, unlike the case of Plasma, which requires validators to securely monitor withdrawals.

The opportunity for zkEVM

The zkEVM race between Scroll, zkSync and Polygon has been heating up , but zkSync looks set to launch its mainnet alpha at the end of October. It's hard to underestimate the potential impact of first-mover advantage on teams crossing the finish line first. Launched in 2017 as one of the first EVM-compatible chains, MATIC was then rebranded to Polygon in February 2021 and attracted a large number of dApps and users amid skyrocketing Ethereum transaction fees. It is relatively easy to migrate an application to an EVM-compatible chain by redeploying similar code. Whichever team pioneers the zkEVM will likely see an explosion in dApp deployments and user activity, building strong network effects like Polygon did in 2021.

As mentioned before, the security of the side chain is not as good as ZKR, while the leading ETH L2 , Arbitrum, and Optimism are all optimistic aggregates that require a 7-day official bridge exit period. L2 adoption continues to gain the upper hand, and the total gas paid by L2 to Ethereum has been trending upwards. Given zkEVM's security and UX advantages over its Ethereum sidechain and optimistic rollup counterparts, the launch of zkEVM will serve as a tailwind for this trend.

ZkSync Vision

< The mainnet alpha release of p>ZkSync 2.0 will be limited to developers who register the project to participate in the fair release. The choice to exclude users is to ensure that dApp teams have enough time to ensure the smooth operation of their products, protect users from any bugs, and give the Matter Labs team more time to iterate on the design of their zkEVM. Notably, Starkware’s Starknet is another general-purpose ZKR smart contract chain in alpha. Starknet uses their own ZKR-optimized language, Cairo, instead of focusing on EVM compatibility. However, Warp is developing a Solidity to Cairo translator that it can put into a bucket similar to zkSync's zkEVM. Cairo's developer tools, security best practices, and open-source libraries will lag far behind Solidity. Additionally, Polygon launched their zkEVM on testnet on October 10th, although zkSync has been running on testnet for about 9 months.

ZkSync achieves EVM compatibility by compiling the advanced smart contract source code Solidity on Ethereum into Yul; an intermediate language that can be compiled into different virtual Machine bytecode. The Yul code is then recompiled using the LLVM compiler framework into a custom, circuit-compatible set of bytecodes designed for zkSync's zkEVM. This approach bypasses the need for zk proofs for all steps in the EVM execution by starting directly from higher-level code, making it easier to decentralize the proof process while maintaining high performance. In the future, support for Rust, Javascript, or other languages can be added by building a new compiler front end, thereby adding flexibility to its zkEVM architecture. It should be pointed out that zkEVM is compatible with EVM and not equivalent at the bytecode level. So, while almost all Ethereum smart contract code can be directly ported to rollup, in some exceptional cases some code needs to be changed and possibly re-audited, and debugging tools are not compatible without minor adjustments.

Account abstraction

The main enhancement to Ethereum's default behavior implemented in zkEVM is the idea of account abstraction. Ethereum’s core architecture supports two types of accounts: Externally Owned Accounts (EOAs), public addresses controlled by private keys that can be used to sign transactions (e.g. Metamask wallets), and contract account transactions that operate on underlying code and cannot be initiated . The main goal here is to hold Token The account is separate from the signer who authorized the transaction.

The EOA in zkSync's zkEVM can of course initiate transactions, but it can also implement arbitrary logic in it like a smart contract account on Ethereum. This is called "account abstraction" and is very similar to EIP-4337, with minor modifications to provide a smoother experience for users. Accounts that can compensate other accounts for transactions are called Paymasters. In practice, Paymaster accounts should enable protocols to exchange ETH or various ERC-20 Token Pay transaction fees. Account abstraction can open up a new avenue of innovation for wallet providers as use cases are discovered. It's worth noting that this is a novel idea that's still being iterated on, and users should proceed with caution.

zkPorter

The zkEVM race is currently the main narrative in L2, but it is debatable that zkSync zkPorter. While zkEVM will bring an order of magnitude scaling to Ethereum, ZKRs are still required to publish data to the Ethereum base layer, which reduces their potential scale. The introduction of zkPorter puts zkSync's zkEVM firmly in the realm of will, meaning users can decide whether to store their data on-chain or off-chain. Users who prioritize security over throughput and extremely low transaction fees will choose to conduct activity on the rollup to guarantee data availability. Users who prioritize throughput and lower transaction fees over security will conduct their activities on zkPorter, where data is published and available off-chain.

All zkPorter transaction data will be published to the Guardian network, which is an eventual zkSync Token Protected proof-of-stake network. Guardians will track the state of the zkPorter side by signing blocks to confirm that the data is available. Guardians of malicious behavior will be slashed, which provides a cryptoeconomic guarantee of data availability. Compared to Optimistic rollups, where data is moved off-chain, malicious operators will be able to steal any funds on the rollup, while nefarious guardians can only freeze the zkPorter state, which in turn freezes their own funds. Also, buy all non-staked zkSync Token To launch such an attack would cost a lot of money and cause significant slippage in the process.

zkSync's dual-account approach for ZKR and zkPorter will provide users with a comprehensive destination to conduct their activities while maintaining high security guarantees . The smart contracts and accounts of both ZKR and zkPorter will be fully combinable with each other. For example, Aave can launch their contract code on ZKR for maximum security, but users can still interact with the contract through their accounts on the zkPorter side for lower fees and higher throughput. The final design of zkPorter is still in progress, so plans may change.

< h3>Layer 3

While there is not much information available to the public, Matter Labs recently announced their goal of launching in Q1 2023 Layer 3 powered by its zkEVM. The ZKR L3 dubbed "Opportunity" is likely to be the first L3 ever launched on the testnet. Our vision is to have an infinite number of fully customizable "HyperChains", all interconnected by native bridges, thus bringing the idea of secure interoperability to life. Pathfinder will be highly experimental, but it is a logical next step in the development of new blockchain scaling architectures.

Third parties building L3 authentication will be able to select their publicly available data, thereby providing users Provide privacy. These teams will also be authorized to launch their own Token , to capture the benefits of what they're building. These Token It can also play a key role in decentralizing its attestation process, orderer or data availability solution. In terms of customizability, a comparison can be made between Cosmos' application-specific chains and zkSync's L3, the main difference being the security of Ethereum supporting the latter and fully interoperable assets between chains without the need for Such a generic messaging protocol.

ZkSync hopes their breakthrough in reducing the hardware requirements to participate in the attestation process without sacrificing performance will set them as an industry standard. This would put their ZKR, zkPorter, and all other zkSync L3s on the same circuit and eliminate the bridging attack vector that was exploited over and over again. While this vision is ambitious, it will enable 10-100x improvements in transaction cost and speed, developer and user experience, interoperability, and security. The main remaining questions are twofold: can L2, which is not equivalent to the EVM at the bytecode level, become an industry standard, and will L2 and L1 teams, competing for a share of user awareness, put aside their differences and scale blockchain to the masses?

Final Thoughts

ZkSync has long been a pioneer in zero-knowledge cryptography, and they Continue to forge ahead on the road to scaling Ethereum. Their launch of the first zkEVM on mainnet before the end of October could give them a significant first-mover advantage and allow them to build a strong network effect. Their two-pronged approach of using interoperable accounts on zkPorter and ZKR is a unique strategy that benefits both developers and end users.

Matter Labs' vision of creating a standard prover for all chains is very ambitious, but if they actually develop the most advanced prover to date, it may Achieve great results. This will open the door to an L3 ecosystem with reasonable sovereignty, high performance, and secure interoperability. The main risk associated with their strategy is the underlying architecture they choose for zkEVM: Ethereum-compatible ZKR at the high-level smart contract code level, rather than EVM equivalence at the bytecode level, or by creating a new programming language And completely remove EVM compatibility. There are teams working on all three of the above strategies, only time will tell who makes the right bet to scale Ethereum.