What Is zkSync?

zkSync is a Layer-2 scaling solution (trustless protocol) that grants quicker and inexpensive payments compared to Layer-1 protocols on Ethereum, which is hopped up by zk-Rollup technology.

A specific advantage of this is that it uses zero-knowledge proofs and on-chain data availability to secure users’ funds as safe as they never left the mainnet. Layer-2 (L2) solutions move most activity off from Layer-1 (L1) and still inherit its security and conclusiveness.

In this article, we explore the zk-Rollup technology, how zkSync works, why it matters, and its features.

What Is zkSync? A Layer 2 Scalable Solution

A lot has been recently written concerning breaking down barriers for mainstream crypto adoption, and this can be through various implementations all to greatly improve users’ experience, or various on and off-ramp solutions to increase global accessibility to the crypto ecosystem. With that in mind, there is a goal aimed to achieve satisfaction by providing end users with as many ways as possible to engage with the crypto world.

Ethereum scaling solution providers believe firmly that cryptography and blockchain are essential technologies for protecting and fostering freedom globally, and have made continuous L-2 scaling solutions birthed to be a way to make that dream a reality for all crypto users across the space. Considerably, this belief has brought about a rapidly increasing number of scaling solutions, with each solution offering a tricky promise to be trustless, secure, economical, and easy to use. These existing scaling solutions have had to make heavy compromises on one or more of those requirements.

The zkSync stands out as a remarkably mainstream scaling technology, implementing innovative solutions in security, performance, and usability to Ethereum scaling, explicitly designed to make it the most enjoyable platform on Ethereum, for both end-users and builders. With the combination of cryptography and on-chain data availability, zk-Rollup (the core technology of zkSync) is the only L-2 scaling solution that doesn’t require any operational activity to keep its users’ funds safe.

Zk refers to zero knowledge, while rollups stand for smart contracts. What smart contracts do is roll up a slew of transactions off the main layer and club them into a single transaction.

A Quick Snippet into Rollups

Rollups are a general-purpose scaling solution that maintains its security level by keeping in line with the Layer One (L1) consensus and security protocol model of the mainchain, in this case, Ethereum. For these reasons, rollups have become the more popular choice in terms of scaling Ethereum now. The basic idea behind a rollup is not very different from its other Layer Two (L2) scaling solution, off-loading work from the mainnet to a sidechain that does all transaction computing and passes the finalized transaction hash back to the L1 chain for verification.

Naturally, Rollups L2 lie on the general concept of only executing a transaction off-chain, but always reporting data about it on the main chain; in practice, while channels and side chains need to report the “summary” of a set of transactions with just two of them on the blockchain, Rollups Every off-chain state update will broadcast a smaller amount of data (concerning the usual size of on-chain transactions) for every transaction.

Who Are the Founders of zkSync?

The popular zkSync has been live since September 2020 and was developed by Matter Labs (headquarters is located in New York), which was founded by Ukrainian Alex Gluchowski and Russian Alexandr Vlasov in 2019. It launched its first publicly available zk-Rollup prototype the same year. With Matter Labs known for its amazing technological innovations, the company has successfully raised $50 million as part of its Series B financing round while receiving funding from both the Ethereum Foundation and top-tier investors, such as Union Square Ventures. The company is famous for building out a sophisticated Rollup product.

How Does zkSync Work?

zkSync is an open-source scalability solution called rollups. More specifically, zkSync is a zk-Rollup. The ZK is an acronym for zero-knowledge, which is a cryptographic word for one party being able to prove to another that something is true, without leaking any other information.

To understand how a zkSync works (and why it is different), let’s break down how the zk-Rollup operates.

The Basic Operations: zkSync Technology

Zk-Rollup

The zk-Rollup is one of the two types of Rollups. In the case of ZK-Rollups, a sequencer node batches hundreds of rollup chain transactions, generate a SNARK (succinct, non-interactive argument of knowledge) or STARK (succinct, transparent argument of knowledge) proof, and then posts these transactions to Layer-1.

These proofs, known as validity proofs, cryptographically validate the transactions before their state gets posted to the Ethereum Mainnet. Even though there are many components to a typical Ethereum transaction, they can all be represented in a unique transaction hash without revealing the transaction data.

Maximum Throughput

The consensus mechanism employed by a blockchain platform determines a decentralized protocol’s transaction throughput. (Throughput is a measure of how many actions are completed within a given time frame). Since the upgrade on Feb 9, 2021, that brought the support of recursion to zkSync on mainnet, protocol throughput is limited essentially only by the need to publish state changes for every transaction via call data Ethereum, to ensure data availability.

Transaction Finality

Transactions in zkSync reach the finality of Ethereum once the SNARK proof of the zkSync block is generated and accepted by the smart contract. (Transaction finality refers to the moment when parties involved in a transaction can consider the transaction to be completed.) Transaction finality can be either deterministic or probabilistic.

Instant Confirmations

Transactions submitted to zkSync by users are instantly confirmed, and instantly displayed to the receiving party in the UI and API, and the transferred assets can immediately be used to make further transfers. A consensus run by the validators provides a subsecond confirmation to the user that their transaction will be included in the next zkSync block, signed by a supermajority of the consensus participants.

Congested Mainnet

The zkSync L2 solution has been properly designed to thrive under congested networks, which is one of its many advantages. Transfers made into or taken from zkSync are completely unaffected by L1 censorship.

Also, it is doubtful that zkSync’s regular operation will be interfered with. The validator’s node is set up to automatically raise the gas price to an above-average level to prioritize mining zkSync blocks. Users of zkSync will be least impacted because the cost per transaction is less than one-hundredth of the cost of a comparable plain transaction on the L1.

Easy Steps to Use in ZkSync

1. Connect your browser-based wallet to the zkSync wallet.
2. Fund your account and activate it.
3. Transfer funds to another zkSync account (optional).
4. Explore the zkSync ecosystem.

ZkSync Ecosystem

Source: ZK Daily

Speaking of the ecosystem, zkSync has a buzzing array of over 100 projects ranging from DeFi to NFTs that are currently building on it.

These projects would simultaneously launch after the zkSync full launch. At this rate, it just could be the largest layer 2 launch ever, just as noted by the team.

The team’s decision on this was to create an ecosystem that could yield economic value by giving various projects and DAPPs a good ground to work on.

EVM Compatible

Currently, there is general support for EVM although it poses a great risk for zkSync as a result of its complexities since general EVM is still in its developmental stage. These complexities, alongside the difficulty faced in generating proof, are a significant source of pain points during transaction processing. zkSync V2 proves to be 99% EVM compatible with Solidity and Vyper needing to first compile to Yul, an intermediate language, before compiling down to zkEVM bytecode through LLVM.

Additionally, zkSync supports their ZKP-optimized Rust-like language, Zinc, which compiles directly to bytecode using LLVM. However, Zinc is currently not Turing complete, and its development has halted since September 2021 due to zkSync focus on Solidity compatibility.

Comparison with Other L2 Solutions

Layer-2 Chainz like Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, and Immutable X aims to scale Ethereum. Each solution offers remedies for any or a few of the key features like scalability, security, throughput, gas fees, and functionality. Not one single solution is broad enough to cover all. However, rollups are an attempt to enhance all these features.

Layer-2 Rollups

As mentioned, zk-Rollup is a layer-2 scalability solution that facilitates faster validation of transactions in Ethereum at a cheaper rate. It simply fuses an array of layer-2 transactions to execute them off-chain at a go and sends them on Ethereum’s blockchain as a single transaction.

Optimistic Rollup improves scalability, as they don’t do any computation by default. After a transaction, they must inform the mainnet of the new state. Optimistic Rollups optimize transactions by reducing congestion of the base lawyer and slashing the gas cost. These rollups publish little information about transactions on-chain and transactions are considered automatically.

Like Optimistic transactions, zk-Rollups also batch up transactions to execute them off-chain. However, there is a difference. Instead of assuming the validity of transactions until proven otherwise, zk-Rollups use validity proofs for instant proof of whether the transactions are valid. The complexity of the technology and its ability to execute arbitrary code makes developing Ethereum Virtual Machine- (EVM)-compatible zk-Rollups challenging.

What Are the Features and Benefits of ZkSync?

Low Gas: Up to 1/100 of L1 gas & cheaper than using optimistic rollups: Since transactions are bundled up, users share the gas cost among themselves. If enough users band together, this allows gas fees to amount to just a few cents. ZK rollups are much cheaper, opening more opportunities for users to explore several crypto use cases because it’s cheap to send to on-chain without signatures.

High Speeds: 2000+ transactions per second (tps) compared to 14tps on L1. Withdrawals take a longer time on Optimistic rollups than on ZK rollups. This is a result of some settings that cannot be altered without a significant decline in security. However, liquidity providers often solve this with their huge idle liquidity. And then, to reward them for their effort, they are charged a fee to go past the delayed waiting time.

Security: Secured by the main Ethereum blockchain: Despite being decentralized, zkSync maintains mainnet-level security, since the validity proof is stored on Layer 1 without any reliance on third parties. This allows increased scalability while maintaining decentralization. zk-Rollups offers a lot of interesting features that attract users more than Optimistic. It has proactive cryptographic security. Unlike Optimistic rollups, ZK removes dependence on users with its cryptographic proofs (Mathematical Models).

Scalability: In terms of expanding the network, Optimistic rollups are much more time-consuming when validating transactions, as they depend on smart contracts at layer 2, which shows how scalable the zk-Rollups are.

Platforms: zkSync, and the largest crypto stablecoin, Tether, also employs zk-Rollups to lift the congestion on the main chain. Meanwhile, Optimism uses optimistic rollups to achieve a cheap layer-2 scaling system on Ethereum, as well as Arbitron.

Conclusion

We can conclusively say that the zkSync has quite an enormous advantage for both builders and users, gracefully providing a reliable scalable solution that tackles the security, performance, and usability issues faced in the Ethereum ecosystem. Noticeably, we have seen how much effort, deliberate rate of development, and aggressive funding are currently put in to bring a solution to the market, as Matter Labs, is solely dedicated to providing scaling solutions for Ethereum.

There is a fast shift in the crypto economy towards zk-Rollups both from end-users and builders. Although it is pretty clear the zk-Rollup ecosystem is still in its birthing days, positively zkSync is demonstrating the beginnings of what zk-Rollups can achieve in a short time. And yes, zkSync is poised to evolve significantly from here. Without lingering further on this, we can accept zkSync is an experimental work in progress.