Rollup can only provide a linear increase in network throughput. To achieve true scalability, we need to achieve exponential growth in throughput.
Original title: ” Layer2 Expansion Major Breakthrough! zkPorter ends the dispute between Zk Rollup and Optimistic Rollup “
Written by: Matter Labs
Compile: Kyle
Layer 2 mass migration is coming soon. As the protocol moves from the Ethereum base layer to Optimistic Rollup and EVM-compatible zk Rollups, many people hope that we can finally make on-chain fees controllable. But everyone who works on Ethereum expansion knows a “dirty secret”: Even with Rollups, we may return to the beginning. This is because any actual throughput increase will quickly be swallowed by demand induction.
Rollup can only provide a linear increase in network throughput-all data must still be propagated to all full nodes. To achieve true scalability, we need to achieve exponential growth in throughput.
Therefore, we think this is such an important breakthrough. We have designed a system with 20,000+ TPS, which provides higher security compared with Optimistic Rollup. More importantly, it will follow zkSync 2.0 on the mainnet within 6 months.
Why is Rollup not enough to solve the expansion problem?
In October 2020, Vitalik announced the Ethereum roadmap centered on Rollup, predicting that if all L1 activities are shifted to Rollup, Ethereum can achieve about 3000 TPS. This will soon become a reality: both Optimistic and zk Rollups now support EVM compatibility, thus facilitating the fast and simple migration of applications from L1 to L2.
Ethereum is growing at an explosive exponential rate. In the past year, the number of DeFi users has increased from 150,000 to 1.8 million-but the gas fee has increased 16 times! (The fee for each Uniswap transaction increased from $0.20 to $36)
why? Because on the basis of new use cases, any improvement in scalability will be accompanied by an increase in financial activities/transactions. Consider what happened over the same period:
- DEX monthly trading volume: US$17.2 billion -> US$67 billion
- DeFi TVL: US$700 million -> US$80 billion (increased by 11000%)
- Opensea monthly sales: 5 million US dollars -> 100 million US dollars
Compared with the Ethereum mainnet, Optimistic Rollup can only increase scalability by about 25 times, while zk Rollups will increase scalability by about 100 times. Before we feel these scalability, we will return to the original point again: unaffordable gas fees and an unaffordable Ethereum for most ordinary users.
Cryptocurrency is about to become mainstream. In a world with 3.8 billion smartphone users (in contrast, Metamask has only 3 million monthly active users), we need to grow it 1,000 times to deal with what is about to happen. This scalability gap prompted us to build a new product-zkPorter.
zkPorter: The engine for large-scale cryptocurrency adoption
In zkSync 2.0, the L2 status will be divided into two aspects: zk Rollup with on-chain data availability and zkPorter with off-chain data availability.
Both parts are composable and interoperable: the contract and account on the zk Rollup side will be able to seamlessly interact with the account on the zkPorter side, and vice versa. correct! From the user’s point of view, the only noticeable difference is that the transaction fee of the zkPorter account has been reduced by 100 times.
Imagine this: Uniswap deploys their smart contract on the zk Rollup side, and retail users on the zkPorter account can pay a fee of <0.03 USD for transactions. How could it be so cheap? This is because the vast majority of Rollup fees are due to the cost of publishing data on Ethereum. The zkPorter account can perform thousands of swaps on the Uniswap contract, but only one update needs to be posted to Ethereum.
The data availability of zkPorter account will be protected by zkSync token holders called “Guardians”. They will track the status of the zkPorter side by signing the block to confirm the data availability of the zkPorter account. Guardians use zkSync tokens to participate in Proof of Stake (PoS), so any data availability failure will result in them being slashed. This provides encryption economic guarantee for data availability.
It is important to note that PoS in zkSync is much safer than PoS in other systems (such as side chains). This is because the zkSync guardian is actually without rights: the guardian cannot steal funds. They can only stop producing blocks. In this case, users can still withdraw funds.
Each user can freely choose his own safety threshold. Any user who wants all the data available on the chain can be completely retained in Rollup. However, if you are a cost-sensitive user, you can choose to keep your funds in zkPorter. (We think traders and new users are likely to use zkPorter.)
This can unlock a whole class of applications that are not economical on L1 or even traditional Rollup applications. They can now also own a residence on Ethereum and provide services to Ethereum users.
zkPorter vs Optimistic Rollup
All of this is possible due to the encryption technology of zero-knowledge proof. Optimistic Rollup cannot achieve this kind of expansion like zkPorter. If data availability is removed from off-chain in Optimistic Rollup, malicious operators will be able to steal all funds in Rollup, and no one will be able to challenge them.
At the same time, zkPorter has a stronger security guarantee than Optimistic Rollup. To understand why, let us briefly outline the costs and benefits of potential attacks.
Attack cost
As of today, the cost of attacking Optimistic Rollup through 51% computing power coordination is less than $70 million (when PoS comes, the cost will be even less). On the other hand, to make the data in zkPorter unavailable, the attacker will need to accumulate 1/3 of the value of all pledged tokens (it will almost certainly exceed $70 million). In addition, because the attacker will have significant slippage when buying tokens (and cannot purchase pledged tokens), the cost of such an attack will be much higher than the cost implied by the spot price.
Attack revenue
If the Optimistic Rollup is successfully attacked, the hacker can steal all the funds in the Rollup. This greatly increases the motivation for the attack. In contrast, an attack on zkPorter cannot be directly exploited: if successful, the attacker can only stop producing blocks, but cannot steal user funds. The difficulty of profiting from service interruptions greatly reduces the motivation for such attacks.
Build on zkPorter
zkPorter is coming soon. The Matter Labs team is working hard to put it into production within 6 months. Soon, this cake feast is about to begin.
zkPorter will be provided in our next-generation smart contract platform zkSync 2.0, which will support Solidity. Our goal is to provide a public testnet in May and go live later in the summer.
At the same time, you can use zkSync 1.x for Layer 2 payment (it has been enabled on the mainnet since June 2020). It will support trading and NFT in a few weeks.
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