{"id":7785,"date":"2022-10-12T22:13:45","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T22:13:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/?p=7785"},"modified":"2022-10-12T22:13:47","modified_gmt":"2022-10-12T22:13:47","slug":"attack-of-the-zkevms-cryptos-10x-moment-cointelegraph-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/?p=7785","title":{"rendered":"Attack of the zkEVMs! Crypto\u2019s 10x moment \u2013 Cointelegraph Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\r\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"totafreearti-20\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"search\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\r\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\r\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = \"crypto\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\r\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\r\namzn_assoc_title = \"\";\r\namzn_assoc_rows =\"1\";\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script>\n<p><strong>Crypto is currently languishing like the internet did in 1996 with slow speeds and few practical use cases, says Steve Newcomb, chief product officer of Matter Labs.<\/strong> <\/p>\n<p>But a major increase in bandwidth and security soon after saw the internet become a crucial part of daily life across the globe \u2014 and we\u2019re right on the cusp of that happening for crypto in the next few months. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cNobody trusted their credit card on it and everybody thought it was a fad and there weren\u2019t any use cases for it,\u201d Newcomb explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then we had 10x moments in bandwidth and then SSL came, and HTPS where you got that lock \u2014 that was a 10x moment in trust. Suddenly in 2005 ecommerce just went through the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Crypto\u2019s \u201810x\u2019 moment could finally be here, with zkSync\u2019s Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible mainnet launching on October 28. EVM is essentially the operating system for Ethereum and enabling it to work using zero knowledge rollups means everything running on Ethereum can seamlessly port over to experience a huge jump in speed and lower costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re not the only ones attacking the problem: Polygon launched its testnet for its own zkEVM this week with Aave, Uniswap and Lens all committing to deploy on it. Scroll launched its \u201cPre Alpha testnet\u201d in July while StarkWare\u2019s zk solution has been ploughing through millions of transactions a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says ZK rollups mean crypto can finally be used for payments again. (Andrew Fenton)<\/p>\n<p>These solutions are all well funded, with Scroll raising $30M, Starkware raising $150M and Polygon raising $450M. Newcomb hints that zkSync\u2019s own funding round is in the same ballpark as Polygon\u2019s, but it\u2019s yet to be officially announced.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>StarkWare is way out ahead of the pack, having launched its own zk rollup solution nine months ago and it turned on recursive scaling in August. But it also made the risky decision to use a custom programming language called Cairo in order to scale more efficiently. This could see adoption by the big protocols move to the path of least resistance on the EVM compatible solutions.<\/p>\n<p>All of the solutions are also working on recursive scaling and\/or \u2018Layer 3\u2019 implementations which will see Ethereum transactions potentially become thousands of times faster, remove the need for interchain bridges, and allow crypto to finally realize its true potential.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is a zero knowledge thingamy?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>ZK rollups are among the biggest buzzwords in blockchain today. The technology allows for thousands of transactions to be computed away from the achingly slow Ethereum blockchain, with a tiny \u201cvalidity proof\u201d verifying that all the transactions were carried out correctly. So you can \u201croll up\u201d 10,000 transactions carried out elsewhere into a single ETH transaction. This is a big deal because even after the Merge Ethereum limps along at 15 transactions per second.<\/p>\n<p>ZK rollups have been used for NFTs and financial transactions for some time now on platforms like Loopring, dyDx and others. But as co-founder Vitalik Buterin pointed out during ETH Seoul in August:\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn general, I think we\u2019ve learned that people don\u2019t just want like a scalable money thing, they want a scalable EVM.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s one of what Newcomb calls \u201cfive magic elements\u201d for ZK rollups. In his view a ZK rollup solution should be general purpose, EVM Compatible and support Ethereum\u2019s programming language Solidity. It should also be open source to fit with crypto\u2019s founding ethos, and it should have a token distribution that decentralizes the protocol rather than concentrates wealth among the team.<\/p>\n<p>By curious coincidence, zkSync has achieved all five of these self imposed metrics. (Newcomb says he can\u2019t detail the exact token distribution, but says around 30% for insiders seems to be the \u201cconsensus.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>The checklist is something of a veiled criticism of competitor StarkWare which is set to give 49.9% of its StarkNet token supply to investors and core contributors. It\u2019s also not open source, although it plans to give control of the IP to its community.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson explains that the only way to take full advantage of the scaling afforded by ZK rollups is to use a custom language like Cairo.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m very confident people will realise once they turn on proofs that the goal is not to simulate EVM. The goal is to reach scalability. To put 10,000, 100,000, one million transactions and have their proof fitted inside a single block of Ethereum,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m willing to bet that you won\u2019t see a full blown ZK EVM that can put a million transactions inside a single proof on Ethereum. As we can easily do today and have been doing for months and years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Eli Ben-Sasson says its solution is faster and better than kludgy EVMs. (Andrew Fenton)<\/p>\n<h2>Scaling versus compatibility<\/h2>\n<p>StarkWare\u2019s Odin-Free explained on Twitter there are complicated mathematical reasons behind the need for a custom language because \u201cproof systems like Stark are based on polynomials over finite fields, giving a much more effective polynomial equation.\u201d OK, let\u2019s take his word for it.<\/p>\n<p>For Ben-Sasson, trying to soup up the EVM is just dumb:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you wanted to solve transportation, you could take a big truck and put it inside a plane and have the plane deliver it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are planes that can fit a truck inside, but that\u2019s a very inefficient way of doing it. Far better way is just taking things and putting them directly in the plane.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That said, the ecosystem does have a transpiler called Warp that turns Solidity code into Cairo code and which has just been used to port over a fork of Uniswap to StarkNet.<\/p>\n<p>So essentially with zk rollups there is a choice to be made between total compatibility with the EVM and scaling. Total compatibility enables DApps and protocols to seamlessly port over and everything just works exactly like on Ethereum for devs and users, but in scaling terms, faster is obviously better.<\/p>\n<p>Newcomb admits StarkWare\u2019s solution will produce scale better, but says sacrificing accessibility means it is more suited to bespoke enterprise applications than being a fundamental part of Ethereum due to \u201cadoption friction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re not EVM compatible, so it\u2019s really hard to port to them. We\u2019ve seen projects that take seven months to port to them.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Compatible but less elegant<\/h2>\n<p>There\u2019s no agreed upon definition, but \u2018EVM equivalent\u2019 usually means \u201cexactly the same as EVM\u201d so you can just deploy the existing smart contract on the solution without any changes.<\/p>\n<p>Scroll is widely agreed to be equivalent, but it\u2019s also not on a proper testnet yet and is many months behind the others with a comparatively small budget. Polygon\u2019s zkEVM solution claims to be equivalent (however this is contested.) zkSync meanwhile, will be EVM compatible \u2013 which means it\u2019s almost identical but a few things may not work due to some design choices to make the solution work better.<\/p>\n<p>Steve Newcomb is passionate about why he believes zkSync has all five ingredients required for success. (Interview screenshot)<\/p>\n<p>Polygon launched its zkEVM Public Testnet on Monday claiming \u201cPolygon is the first project ever to deliver a full-featured, open source implementation of zkEVM; a groundbreaking milestone, not just for Polygon, but for the whole industry.\u201d Polygon says the testnet \u201cincludes a completely open-sourced zk-Prover \u2014 the first of its kind to be released publicly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Co-founder Mihailo Bjelic tells Magazine early tests show that \u201cPolygon\u2019s zkEVM can reduce Ethereum\u2019s network fees by approximately 90% and increase the network\u2019s throughput by several orders of magnitude.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He says that open sourcing the technology \u201cproves our alignment with the ethos of the industry and increases security of the solution since anyone can review it and point out potential bugs. This is not the case with StarkNet or zkSync, which keep critical parts of their implementations closed source, at least for now.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Technical bit<\/h2>\n<p>According to Scroll\u2019s Luozhu Zhang there are three potential types of zkEVMs: bytecode level, language level and consensus level. zkSync and StarkWare are at the language level and require a compiler or transpiler step, while Scroll and Polygon are bytecode level approaches. The human readable form of bytecode is called an opcode.<\/p>\n<p>Bjelic says that Polygon\u2019s solution is designed to be EVM equivalent whereas:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cProjects like StarkNet and zkSync are taking a different route \u2014 they have their own custom virtual machines, and then they try to transpile Solidity, the most popular language built on top of EVM to the languages these virtual machines can interpret,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are two major challenges with this approach: (i) it is hard to build a transpiler that will support 100% of Solidity smart contracts and (ii) even if you have the transpiler you still can not leverage all the developer and end user tools like Polygon zkEVM can.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Newcomb says there is bad information circulating. \u201cWe do not transpile, we compile,\u201d he says. And he takes a shot back at Polygon saying that from looking at the project\u2019s Github that they are yet to develop a working general purpose prover integrated with a working sequencer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf this is the case then it means they have an undefinable amount of work to be done. The last 10% of any complex system is always the most difficult. This looks similar to where we were or even behind where we were when we launched testnet. And then after that it took us nine months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Polygon\u2019s Mihailo Bjelic says its solution is 100% EVM equivalent. (Twitter)<\/p>\n<h2>Mostly compatible<\/h2>\n<p>zkSync meanwhile is compatible with all but three of Ethereum\u2019s 141 Opcodes \u2014 one of which has been deprecated, another is being deprecated and the third one is used by\u00a0 less than 1\/10th of 1% of projects according to Newcomb.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo what did we get for not being fully equivalent? We got two things, our cost for performance is way better than any solution going after equivalence. We\u2019re way faster, way cheaper. And the second thing we got is we were able to stick an LLVM compiler inside of our chain which you can\u2019t do if you\u2019re doing equivalent. And what an LLVM compiler does is we\u2019re already looking at layer three.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The LLVM would let a Python, Rust or C++ developer code on their solution, which then compiles down to work the same way with Solidity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is huge for adoption. So where this project that took seven months over here in Cairo that same ecosystem project ported to us in seven days. That\u2019s compatibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He concedes it would take just one day to port over if zkSync had total equivalence but would miss the LLVM and the increased scaling. So he says it\u2019s a trade off worth making.<\/p>\n<h2>Layer 3 and recursive scaling<\/h2>\n<p>The coolest thing about being able to compress a large number of transactions into a single validity proof, is that the technology allows you to compress numerous <em>other proofs<\/em> into a single proof as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s called recursive scaling and Declan Fox, product manager for rollups at Consensys, believes it\u2019s so powerful that in theory the entire global financial system could run on Ethereum. \u201cWe have the technology to achieve that kind of throughput necessary,\u201d he says. \u201cWith recursive rollups and proofs, we theoretically can infinitely scale.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Also read: <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>Ethereum is eating the world: \u2014 \u2018You only need one internet\u2019\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>StarkWare turned on recursive scaling back in August and has processed more than 30 million transactions since using the tech.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRecursion has already, at this early stage, increased the number of transactions in a single proof by approximately 8x,\u201d explains Ben-Sasson. \u201cWhat is more, it\u2019s proving so efficient, soon after it went into production there\u2019s a reduction of around 40% to our own cloud cost for proof generation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese aren\u2019t predictions or numbers we hope to see, but rather numbers from what\u2019s in production today. And I stress: this is just the start, and changes we\u2019ll make will mean these numbers will get more and more impressive.<\/p>\n<p>The Starkware ecosystem is growing. (ZK Daily Twitter)<\/p>\n<p>Polygon is about to implement its Plonky2 solution according to Bjelic. It\u2019s an open source zk-SNARK solution. \u201cThis recursive SNARK can be used to verify transactions orders of magnitudes faster than existing alternatives. Plonky2 is also natively compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, which allowed Polygon to develop the zkEVM.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And the testnet for ZK Sync\u2019s Layer 3 will be released soon, in time to take advantage of an Ethereum upgrade called Proto-Danksharding early next year designed specifically to give rollups the space on Ethereum to blossom. Newcomb expects Layer 3 to be in production within a year. They\u2019re calling it Pathfinder, an ecosystem of \u2018fractal hyperchains.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u2018We could probably go on for hours engineering wise, but functionally the further up the recursive chain you get away from Etherium the cheaper the data costs get and it\u2019s a 10x, 10x, 10x, 10x, as you recurse off up with data costs, and that\u2019s unique to zk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s where we get to 100,000 TPS and a million TPS,\u201d he says. Visa chugs along at around 4000 TPS on a normal day, spiking up to around 65,000 TPS at peak times like Chrismats.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cZK is the only way to get to like 100,000 TPS so that you can get to the levels where something like Visa replaces its underlying protocol with a blockchain. And when you do that, that\u2019s your mass adoption moment.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another astonishing development according to Newcomb is that Layer 3 can get rid of the requirement for interchain bridges, which is where all more than $2 billion of hacks have occurred this year alone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the other things that we\u2019ve already achieved up in Layer 3, we get rid of all bridges. And when you can have one prover doing the circuit for all of the hyperchains up in L3, any communication from one blockchain to another now is native. That\u2019s the other reason why Vitalik said this is the end game because there are no more bridges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018If you make it faster, cheaper by orders of magnitude, if you make it easier to use and more welcoming to a broader audience of developers by having more languages available, and then you make people trust it because you get rid of bridges. That\u2019s what I always say is a star cluster of 10x moments up in L3 and that\u2019s where the game is going to be had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The demo launch was successful, and now our goal is to get our project on the path of regular updates. @zksync  is scheduled to launch on October 28th, and you&#8217;ll soon see the release of @zkSync compatible version of Homespace Metaverse.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udd25Get ready, it&#8217;s going to be hot! pic.twitter.com\/O6sRm3tryz<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Homespace.is (@HomespaceNFT) September 29, 2022<\/p>\n<h2>Not fixed yet\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p>So that\u2019s it? With the arrival of ZK rollups and EVM compatible scaling solutions everything has been solved?<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately not. ZK rollups are currently very good at taking computation off of Ethereum, but they still need to write enough data back to the main chain so that if the rollup stopped working or it taken over by bad guys, then some other outfit could step into the breach and work out who owes what to who.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s called the data availability problem and a considerable amount of Ethereum\u2019s roadmap with proto danksharding and full danksharding aims to solve it and allow for more data to be included. There are a couple of ways around this at present including storing data on Validiums, which are cheaper but less secure.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe<\/p>\n<p>The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a<br \/>\n        week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo the way we describe it is if you have a baseball card collection, and many of these cards don\u2019t cost a lot and you\u2019ve saved them in Valdium but then one rare card that is worth a lot of money you will probably save on Layer 1,\u201d says Ben-Sasson.<\/p>\n<p id=\"891f\">Polygon is working on a number of solutions to this same problem including Avail \u201ca blockchain where information is available to everyone at any time, was designed specifically for this purpose,\u201d Bjelic says.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>zkSync\u2019s Pathfinder will enable devs to choose from three options for data availability, a Validium, zkPorter (mixing on chain and off chain) and ZKRollup (full security).<\/p>\n<p>zkSync is already on the road. (Pexels)<\/p>\n<p>Don\u2019t expect a big bang from zkSync\u2019s mainnet launch on October 28. It will be kind of underwhelming at first, with a couple of months of just Matter Labs testing and offering users bounties to try to hack it or exploit it. Then DApps will be allowed to port over, and start building and testing security.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then when we feel like we got everything done, we do what\u2019s called lift in the gate. And then all the users can come into the system simultaneously and it\u2019s called a fair release program. So we don\u2019t favor any project over another.\u201d He says that 150 projects will launch at that point and there will no longer be any reason a project would wait around for Polygon\u2019s solution to be finished..<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s like they\u2019re going to a racetrack and they\u2019re showing up with the chassis of a car that doesn\u2019t have any wheels, no steering wheel and absolutely no engine,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd we have the whole product done. You know we have the Ferrari and we\u2019re ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"author__name\">Andrew Fenton<\/h2>\n<p>Based in Melbourne, Andrew Fenton is a journalist and editor covering cryptocurrency and blockchain. He has worked as a national entertainment writer for News Corp Australia, on SA Weekend as a film journalist, and at The Melbourne Weekly.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tFollow the author \t\t\t\t\t\t\t@andrewfenton<\/p>\n<p>        <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\r\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"totafreearti-20\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"search\";\r\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\r\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\r\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = \"bitcoin\";\r\namzn_assoc_default_category = \"All\";\r\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\r\namzn_assoc_title = \"\";\r\namzn_assoc_rows =\"1\";\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/2022\/10\/12\/attack-zkevms-cryptos-10x-moment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Crypto is currently languishing like the internet did in 1996 with slow speeds and few practical use cases, says Steve Newcomb, chief product officer of Matter Labs. But a major increase in bandwidth and security soon after saw the internet become a crucial part of daily life across the globe \u2014 and we\u2019re right on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bitcoin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7785"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7787,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7785\/revisions\/7787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cryptoheretostay.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}