Analysis of zkSync: Why is ZK technology said to be Endgame?

Author: Hao Tian; Source: Chain View

Recently, after the Starknet super airdrop came to an end, Almost all the global attention has fallen on @zksync. As half of ZK-Rollup, zkSync still dominates all data indicators, and it is reasonable for the market to have high expectations for zkSync.

However, zkSync did not express its airdrop plan, but mentioned ZK is the Endgame many times. Is ZK technology really the endgame for layer 2? Next, let me talk about my views:

1) The technical debate between OP-Rollup and ZK-Rollup has been the focus of the past year or two. Everyone generally believes that ZK -The advantage of Rollup is that there is no 7-day challenge period. This is due to the fact that ZK technology can quickly convert transaction status between layer2 and the main network and ensure the validity of each transaction, while OP-Rollup can only assume the optimism of layer2 submitted transactions and leaves a 7-day challenge time window To ensure that layer 2 transactions will not be malicious.

In fact, layer2 users are more sensitive to the instant conversion feature of transaction status only in Withdraw withdrawal scenarios. Most common interactions such as Swap and Transfer often It is completed within layer 2, and only part of the transaction data and status updates are submitted to the main network for final recording and determination. Users’ perception of the 7-day challenge period is destined to be weak.

Over time, the OP-Rollup camp has become lax on key safety mechanisms during the 7-day challenge period, and there are few Battle-Tested 7-day challenge cases.

Perhaps in the opinion of many project parties in the OP department, as long as the market and ecological data are well operated, everything about "decentralization and the 7-day challenge" will not exist problems can be temporarily "ignored" by the market. In contrast, ZK's advantages in safety mechanisms are "innate".

In my opinion, there is no problem for OP-Rollup to vigorously promote OP Stack and other strategies, but it must simultaneously speed up the implementation of the 7-day challenge plan, otherwise OP- Stimulated by Stack's one-click link posting, the more subjects submitted to layer2's Sequencer node, the greater the possibility of using the 7-day challenge to challenge potential security issues to do evil.

2) The technical performance of zkSync has been very good after the boojum upgrade. The upgrade from SNARK to STARK proof form is one aspect. The key is that the gas fee is indeed as expected. , realizing ZK’s vision that the larger the number of users, the cheaper gas will be.

According to Growthpie data, zkSync’s Gas has remained at a low level among the four kings of layer2 in the past two months, with the average gas consumption per transaction controlled at $0.12. Left and right, already better than Arbitrum and Optimism. At that time, during the Inscription stress test phase, when the gas fees of other platforms increased to varying degrees with the influx of huge amounts of transaction traffic, only zkSync TPS set a new high, and the gas fees also declined.

In addition, after the Blob block is put into use after the Cancun upgrade, the advantage of zkSync's low gas fee will be further locked in. The reason is simple:

1. The cost structure of OP-Rollup is almost entirely on the cost of data storage and verification submitted to the main network, although the Blob block will Increasing the amount of data storage will reduce Gas costs, but the use of Blob plug-in data packages is also market-oriented. It is foreseeable that many layer2 projects will increase the total Gas price in order to seize the priority use rights of Blobs, thereby reducing the expectation of evenly sharing Gas fees. ;

2. ZK-Rollup will also increase the total Gas consumption by snatching Blob blocks, but ZK does not need to store all Raw Data on the main network. , the newly released storage space will store a larger amount of compressed SNARK proofs, which will further increase the TPS delivered by ZK layer2 to the main network, thus making the amortized Gas fee lower than OP.

Although the ZK off-chain Prover system also has certain cost factors, with the continuous algorithm optimization and development of general-purpose lightweight solutions such as @RiscZero @ProjectZKM Hardware acceleration, the cost of this part is also continuing to decrease.

Obviously, whether it is the possibility of data compression and ZK hardware acceleration, the ZK series project team has more initiative in cost control, while the OP series project party has more initiative in cost control. It relies more on the DA data characteristics of the main network, which makes it less imaginative than ZK in terms of gas fee reduction expectations.

3) zkSync official continues to work closely with NFT communities such as @pudgypenguins @apecoin @moonbirds. In the official tweets and Space live broadcast room, you can hear a lot about Account Abstraction account abstraction, Paymaster pays Gas, Onboard New Users incremental market, Gaming games, user experience UX and other keywords.

It can be seen that zkSync officials are actually intentionally guiding the market to view ZK from a long-term perspective, which also reflects zkSync’s values ​​in building a layer2 comprehensive chain: Continue to bring incremental markets and users to the main network.

Recently, many friends have discussed the potential impact of PayMaster. In my opinion, Account Abstraction has always been the key technology underlying zkSync. Based on Paymaster Function, the project Paymaster can directly provide gas subsidies to users, which means that in the future, a large number of ZK ecological projects may start a gas subsidy war based on Paymaster. This will stimulate and attract more high-quality ecological projects, and at the same time, it will also provide zkSync with internal rolls. Projects within the ecology bring opportunities for spurts of development.

The slow development of the ZK system ecosystem has been criticized. This is due to the high technical threshold of ZK circuit circuits, the cognitive gap existing in ZK data structure and algorithm optimization, etc., which leads to ZK correlation. The application experience is relatively disappointing. Starknet’s big move to move out of Tokenomics is to accelerate the solution of this problem through market-based incentive mechanisms.

According to L2beat data, after the STRK airdrop, Starknet’s TVL quickly sprinted from more than 10 ranks to fourth place, and the total TVL increased 6 times to 13 billion dollars. The value and significance of Tokenomics is immediate. The fundamentals are similar to Starknet. If zkSync also comes up with the trump card of Tokenomics, and the officially encouraged project parties engage in a round of gas subsidy war based on Paymaster, the prosperity of the ZK ecosystem can be imagined.

4) The layer3 Hyperchain launched by zkSync and the Superchain strongly supported by Optimism are both a type of Long-term in which the layer2 project team uses the Stack strategy to enhance its own brand structure. Strategy.

Currently SuperChain is focusing on the layer2 strategic alliance. The goal is to build many new layer2 projects based on the open source framework of OP Stack technology, and ultimately realize the super chain by sharing the Sequencer component. architecture.

In comparison, Hyperchain is more flexible and can advance layer2+layer3 at the same time. Use the layer2 strategy to expand allies with greater demand for the Prover system, and then use the higher layer The layer3 application chain is used to seize high-frequency application markets such as games.

The application chain market is very important to ZK technology. The high TPS, low Gas fee and interactive experience of ZK series layer 2 and many other technical native characteristics determine that ZK It may not be dominant in purely financial DeFi applications, but if you look at a broader market with high expansion, ultimate UX experience, and game applications, ZK-Rollup has a lot of room for imagination.

Above.

In short, ZK technology is the basic infra of the next generation of Mass Adoption era and the core catalyst for the competition of the next generation of application chains. If OP-Rollup relies on Tokenomics and other factors to set off the craze of Stack's one-click chain issuance, making it the main focus before the Cancun upgrade, then after the Cancun upgrade, many factors such as technology, market, and ecology will promote ZK-Rollup to become the most popular layer 2 market. Handsome boy.

Let Starkent's bullets fly for a while, zkSync is gathering momentum, ZK is the Endgame!

Note: This article has participated in the essay contest organized by @CNzksync Chinese community - zkSync, the future is here.