What Technological Innovations Does zkSync Possess? Why Does It Have the Potential to Impact the Existing Rollup Ecosystem?

After the growth and market attention brought about by the Starknet airdrop activity, zkSync, which is also based on zero-knowledge proof (ZK) architecture, has begun to receive attention from the community. Cryptocurrency researcher Haotian has written an article explaining the future advantages and opportunities of zkSync.

Why is zkSync worth looking forward to? zk-Rollups are more secure and faster. zkSync reduces fuel costs as transaction volume increases. zkSync focuses on user experience. Hyperchain seizes the high-frequency trading scene. Token narrative activates technological innovation.

Recently, the massive airdrop by Starknet has once again brought attention to the development of ZK Layer2, with most of the focus falling on zkSync. However, what is the current development status of zkSync? Is there anything worth looking forward to in terms of narrative or technological innovation beyond token issuance?

Conclusion first, zkSync, as one of the leading ZK-Rollups, actually has advantages in various data indicators, including security, community collaboration, user experience improvement, and Stack architecture.

However, the team has not yet expressed any plans to issue tokens.

The technical debate between OP-Rollups and ZK-Rollups has been a focus of the past year or two. Although ZK-Rollup has the advantage of not having a seven-day challenge period, in reality, users only feel the settlement of transaction status when withdrawing funds from Layer2. Most on-chain transactions, whether OP-Rollups or ZK-Rollups, do not differ much in user experience.

Haotian believes that the OP-Rollups camp has been somewhat lax in the crucial security mechanism of the seven-day challenge and there have been few cases challenging fraud proofs. There is still much work to be done. In contrast, the advantage of ZK-Rollups in terms of security mechanism is inherent, and asset security has become zkSync’s technical advantage.

After the boojum version upgrade, zkSync implemented the STARK proof form and achieved the vision of lower fuel costs with larger transaction volumes, with the lowest transaction fees among the four major Layer2 solutions (Arbitrum, Optimism, Starknet).

When zkSync’s network was released, while the fuel costs on other platforms rose to varying degrees due to increased traffic, zkSync’s TPS reached a new high and even experienced a decrease in fuel costs.

Additionally, after the Cancun upgrade, the introduction of the Blob block will further enhance zkSync’s advantage of low fuel costs. Because ZK Layer2 does not need to store all the original data on the mainnet, the released storage space can store a larger amount of compressed SNARK proofs. This will further increase the TPS of ZK Layer2 transmitted to the mainnet, resulting in lower fuel costs compared to OP Layer2.

Although the Prover system also has certain cost factors, with the continuous algorithm optimization and hardware acceleration of lightweight solutions such as RiscZero and ProjectZKM, these costs will continue to decrease.

In summary, ZK-Rollups have more dominance in cost control in terms of data compression possibilities and ZK hardware acceleration. OP-Rollups, on the other hand, rely more on DA design, making them less capable of reducing fuel costs compared to ZK-Rollups, but they have more room for imagination.

Don’t think that zkSync is just a team that pursues technology. You can often hear a lot of keywords related to account abstraction, paymaster fee reimbursement, and user experience on their official Twitter and Space live broadcasts.

Account abstraction has always been a key development technology for zkSync, and based on the Paymaster function, project parties can directly subsidize users’ fuel costs. In the future, many projects may start a subsidy war based on this, coupled with other account abstraction technologies, which may stimulate ecosystem development.

The Layer3 Hyperchain launched by zkSync and the Superchain strongly supported by Optimism are both part of the Stack strategy, which is a strategy to enhance their own brand patterns.

However, at present, SuperChain focuses on the Layer2 strategic alliance, aiming to build many new Layer2 projects based on the OP Stack open-source framework and ultimately achieve a superchain architecture through shared sequencers.

In contrast, the Hyperchain architecture is more flexible and can promote both Layer2 and Layer3 simultaneously. Using the Layer2 strategy to expand alliances with high-demand Prover systems, and then using higher-level Layer3 application chains to seize the application market for high-frequency transactions in games and other fields.

The application chain market is crucial for zero-knowledge proof technology because it may not have an advantage in low-frequency scenarios such as finance, but when the usage scenarios become high-interaction applications such as games and communities, its advantages of low fuel costs and high efficiency can be highlighted.

The slow development of the zero-knowledge proof ecosystem has always been criticized, stemming from the high technical threshold of ZK circuit technology and the cognitive gap in data structures and algorithm optimization. Starknet’s move to introduce tokens is accelerating the solution to this problem, and if zkSync, which has similar fundamentals, also issues its own tokens in the future, it can leverage these advantages to showcase the value of technological innovation behind the slow development of the market.

Although the team has not yet committed to issuing tokens, it can be expected that zkSync will use its resources to implement the strongest growth strategy and challenge the market landscape.

(Source: Chainnews, not investment advice)