zkPorter: A new breakthrough in Layer 2 scheme

A massive Layer 2 migration is coming. As more and more protocols migrate from the Ethereum blockchain to Optimistic Rollup and EVM-compatible zkRollup, many people hope to achieve controllable transaction fees on the chain. However, the developers of Ethereum's scalability solutions are well aware that even with Rollup, we may end up back to square one. This is because any substantial increase in throughput is quickly swallowed by induced demand.

Rollup can only increase throughput linearly (all data still has to be broadcast to all full nodes). However, to achieve true scalability, we need an exponential increase in throughput.

Therefore, we consider zkPorter a breakthrough. zkPorter can not only achieve a throughput of 20,000+ tps, but also outperform Optimisitc Rollup in security. More importantly, this system will be launched on the mainnet with zkSync 2.0 within 6 months.

Mint Square, an NFT market based on Layer 2 ZK Rollup, adds support for zkSync2.0 testnet: Golden Finance News, Mint Square, an NFT market based on Layer 2 ZK Rollup of Ethereum, announced that it now supports the zkSync2.0 testnet, allowing users to use zkSync2.0 Mint, buy and sell NFTs on the testnet. Mint Square has previously supported the Stark Net Goerli testnet. [2022/4/7 14:10:35]

In October 2020, Vitalik proposed a Rollup-centric Ethereum roadmap, and predicted that if all transactions on Layer 1 are transferred to Rollup for execution, Ethereum will reach a net throughput of about 3000 tps. This prediction will soon come true: both Optimistic Rollup and zkRollup are currently compatible with EVM, allowing applications on Layer 1 to be easily and quickly migrated to Layer 2.

ZKSwap will carry out the first ZKS repurchase and destruction on April 30: According to the ZKSwap economic white paper, the ZKSwap agreement will charge 0.3% of all Layer2 Swap transaction volume as a transaction fee, of which 0.05% will be used as an agreement fee to repurchase ZKS regularly, The resulting ZKS are directly destroyed. ZKSwap will carry out ZKS repurchase and destruction at the end of each month and issue a corresponding announcement. The repurchase and destruction strategy is as follows: use a quantitative algorithm to obtain the optimal trading path for each currency to ZKS on ZKSwap, and convert all the monthly handling fees into ZKS to destroy.

The first destruction will be carried out on April 30, 2021, Beijing time. After the destruction, specific data will be released and publicized. [2021/4/27 21:03:46]

Ethereum is growing exponentially. The number of DeFi users exploded from 150,000 to 1.8 million in just one year, but gas fees grew 16 times faster than that (from $0.2 to $36 per Uniswap transaction)!

ZKSwap opens FEI and TRIBE liquidity mining liquidity exceeds 18 million US dollars: According to ZKSwap official news, ZKSwap has listed Fei (FEI) and Tribe (TRIBE) tokens, and opened at 18:00 on April 4, 2021, Beijing time Three trading pairs of TRIBE/FEI, FEI/ZKS, and TRIBE/ZKS will participate in liquidity mining activities, with a total reward of 900,000 ZKS.

According to ZKSwap.info data, after the event started, the assets of ZKSwap Layer 2 increased rapidly. As of 20:00 on April 4, 2021, Beijing time, the liquidity of the above-mentioned active-zce currency pair has reached 18 million+ US dollars, and the total assets of the platform Layer 2 have also exceeded 5 billion dollars.

In addition, ZKSwap is currently conducting the second phase of liquidity mining and transaction mining activities. For more details about the activities, please refer to the original text. [2021/4/4 19:45:21]

Why? Because increased scalability is often accompanied by increased financial activity/transaction volume driven by new use cases. Think about what happened during this time:

Gate.io has completed the ZKS airdrop and resumed ZKS deposit and withdrawal: According to the official announcement, Gate.io has completed the snapshot of the user’s ZKS holding balance according to the official snapshot rules, and airdropped it in proportion (1:1 ratio), and has resumed the ZKS deposit and cash withdrawal services. [2021/2/25 17:52:41]

Monthly trading volume on decentralized exchanges: 1.72 billion → $67 billion

DeFi total lock-up value: 700 million → 80 billion US dollars (a 110-fold increase!)

OpenSea sales in one month: 5 million → $100 million

Optimistic Rollup can only increase throughput by 25 times compared to mainnet, and zkRollup can increase throughput by 100 times. Before we know it, we will soon be back at square one: Ethereum’s sky-high gas fees are still unaffordable for the vast majority of ordinary users.

Cryptocurrencies are becoming mainstream. Metamask currently has 3 million monthly active-zce users across 3.8 billion smartphones worldwide. In other words, we need to increase the throughput by 1000 times to meet the needs of the future. To fill this large gap, we built zkPorter.

Gate.io will distribute ZKS airdrops to users holding ZKS positions, and the airdrop ratio is 1:1: According to Gate.io Sesame Open Market, as of 10:10 today, the highest increase of ZKS in 24H is 160.66%, and the current increase is 112.78%. The highest price in 24H is 9.673 US dollar, the current quotation is 8.134 US dollars, and the 24H spot trading volume reaches 22.8535 million US dollars.

Gate.io will airdrop ZKS to users according to the snapshot of the user’s ZKS holding balance at 10 a.m. on February 25th. The airdrop ratio is 1:1. Gate.io platform users can receive the airdrop without any operation. After the airdrop is completed, the funds in the account View in . Due to the large number of airdrops this time, ZKS trading will be suspended during the ZKS airdrop period for users, and will reopen at 12 noon on February 25th. Please be sure to adjust the pending order price in time before the opening. [2021/2/21 17:36:23]

In zkSync 2.0, the Layer 2 state will be divided into two parts: zkRollup provides on-chain data availability, and zkPorter provides off-chain data availability.

Both are composable and interoperable: contracts and accounts on zkRollup can seamlessly interact with accounts on zkPorter, and vice versa. From a user perspective, the only noticeable difference is that zkPorter accounts reduce transaction fees by a factor of 100.

Imagine this: Uniswap deploys smart contracts on zkRollup. When using a zkPorter account, users only need to pay less than $0.03 in transaction fees. Why can the transaction fee of zkPorter be so low? This is because the cost of publishing data to Ethereum accounts for the vast majority of Rollup’s transaction fees.

Data availability for zkPorter accounts will be guaranteed by a group of zkSync token holders called Guardians. The guardian will confirm the data availability of the zkPorter account by signing the block to track the status of zkPorter. Guardians participate in Proof-of-Stake by staking their zkSync tokens, and are fined if data becomes unavailable. This provides economic security for data availability.

It should be noted that zkSync's PoS mechanism is much more secure than that of other systems (such as sidechains). This is because zkSync guardians are weak: they cannot steal funds. They can only freeze the state of the zkPorter (and thus their own deposit). And, in this case, zkRollup users will still be able to get their funds back.

Each user is free to choose their security thresholds. Users who want all their data to be available on-chain can stay on Rollup. However, if you are sensitive to transaction fees, you can choose zkPorter. (We think traders and new users are most likely to use zkPorter.) This architecture is called Volition.

In this way, those applications with higher costs on Layer 1 and even traditional Rollup have room to survive. With zkPorter, they can also be rooted in Ethereum and provide services to Ethereum users.

All thanks to zero-knowledge proof technology. Optimistic Rollup cannot achieve scalability like zkPorter. If the data availability of an Optimistic Rollup is shifted from on-chain to off-chain, malicious operators can steal all the funds in the Rollup without anyone being able to challenge them.

At the same time, zkPorter can provide stronger security than Optimistic Rollup. To see why, let's briefly analyze the costs and benefits of a potential attack.

(1) Attack cost

Currently, the cost of launching a 51% attack on Optimistic Rollup is no more than $70 million (with Proof of Stake, this problem will be much better). In contrast, a data unavailability attack on zkPorter would cost the attacker 2/3 of the total stake (almost certainly higher than $70M). In addition, because the attacker will cause a high slippage rate when purchasing tokens (tokens used for pledge cannot be purchased), the cost of data unavailability attacks will be much higher than the estimated amount based on the spot price.

(2) Attack income

If a hacker successfully attacks an Optimistic Rollup, all funds in the Rollup can be stolen. This greatly increases the incentive to attack. Attacking zkPorter does not directly bring benefits: if successful, the attacker can only prevent blocks from being produced, but cannot steal user funds. Since it is difficult for attackers to profit by disrupting services, this greatly reduces attack incentives.

zkPorter will be live soon. Members of our Matter Labs team are working hard to get zkPorter officially launched within 6 months. Soon, we will reap the fruits.

zkPorter and zkSync 2.0 are interoperable - our next generation smart contract platform will support Solidity. Our goal is to launch a public testnet in May, followed by an official mainnet launch in late summer.

You can also use zkSync 1.x to make payments (mainnet launched in June 2020). In a few weeks, zkSync 1.x will have transaction functionality and support for NFTs.

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