The Ethereum ecosystem is ready to witness one of many hottest blockchain traits this 12 months, with quite a few firms keen to take advantage of Polygon’s upcoming zkEVM rollup.
What are zero-knowledge proofs?
Zero-knowledge (ZK) know-how is a cryptographic resolution reshaping the blockchain business. They execute languages and low-level bytecode at a programmable stage, backed by the identical guidelines because the Ethereum mainnet.
It’s a digital machine that makes use of zero-knowledge proofs to confirm knowledge with out revealing any details about the information’s content material or properties. It’s a censorship-resistant protocol replicating the transaction execution surroundings of the Ethereum mainnet.
Vitalik Buterin, the founding father of Ethereum, categorized zkEVMs into 4 foremost varieties and a fifth. Right here is his breakdown of those varieties.T
- Kind-1 zkEVMs: absolutely equal to Ethereum
- Kind-2 zkEVMs: EVM (not Ethereum) equivalence
- Kind-3 zkEVMs: departing from EVM
- Kind-4 zkEVMs: shut cousins to the EVM
“The undertaking is a full engineering undertaking,” stated Jordi Baylina, who leads the technical workforce constructing the Polygon zkEVM. “The thought is that with these electronics, we by some means constructed a processor. On prime of that, a program will be written that processes transactions. It’s a full stack of elements with totally different groups working in every of those layers in these stacks.”
In a YouTube video launched Mar. 2, Baylina defined the technical elements behind the rollout, “the system that we’re constructing is censorship resistant. It’s not an ideal resolution, however as much as a sure level as a result of the system shouldn’t be common.”
“We created the meeting itself. It’s a new processor, new meeting, new method of writing {hardware}. So it’s like you are creating a know-how, however at the identical time you want to study to use the know-how you are creating, which is, from the generic perspective is fascinating, however it’s additionally very difficult.”
Technical particulars
With the zkEVM rollup, an ERC-20 switch will outline distinctive knowledge infrastructures resembling ProgramCounter, GlobalCounter, EVMWord, GasInfo, and GasCost, which embody and include parts resembling stack, reminiscence, and opcodes. The computer and gc are encapsulated to usize, whereas EVMWord encapsulates a u8 array with a size of 32.
Whereas StackAddress is represented as a usize, Stack is a dynamic array consisting of EVMWord. MemoryAddress can be a usize, with values between 0 and 1023, whereas Reminiscence is an array of u8. To simplify memory-related operations, builders cleverly make the most of Rust macros to extract crucial reminiscence data resembling index and vary traits and implement them standardized. However, Storage is represented by a HashMap, and its key values are all EVMWord.
The race for zkEVM supremacy
The race is on to hit the market with a working product.
A number of tasks are in a race to launch the primary absolutely useful and EVM-equivalent zkEVM, with a few of the prime contenders being Polygon zkEVM, zkSync, StarkNET, and Scroll.
Polygon zkEVM’s is open-source and goals to chop transaction prices by as much as 90%, whereas zkSync 2.0 is stay on the Ethereum Testnet, permitting builders to jot down Solidity good contracts. StarkNET makes use of ZK-STARKs, that are safer however have limitations, and Scroll is constructing a excessive composability resolution that prioritizes safety and transparency.
Polygon’s $250M guess on zkEVM
Polygon bought the Hermez Community for $250 million in 2021 and later launched its Ethereum Layer-2 ZK-rollup resolution, Polygon Hermez, in mid-2022. In July 2022, Polygon introduced the rebranding of Polygon Hermez to Polygon zkEVM, which adopted the Kind-2 zkEVM strategy to be EVM-equivalent however not Ethereum-equivalent.
Builders might want to adapt code and EVM instruments to the ZK-rollup. Polygon goals to succeed in 2000 transactions per second and minimize transaction prices by as much as ninety p.c, making it cheaper than the Ethereum Mainnet. Polygon launched its zkEVM Public Testnet on October 10.
