Weekly Rollup #29
Introducing Zeth: A “Type 0” zkEVM | LSTs & Protocol Credibility | More Rollup Definitions | Week ending August 25th
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This week’s issue covers:
Introducing Zeth: A “Type 0” zkEVM
More News & Announcements
LSTs & Protocol Credibility
More Rollup Definitions
More Education & Discourse
📣 News & Announcements
Introducing Zeth: A “Type 0” zkEVM
Last week, the RISC Zero team introduced Zeth, “an open source ZK block prover for Ethereum built on the RISC Zero zkVM”.
What is Zeth
Zeth can do everything a normal Ethereum network node would do in order to process transactions and generate a new block. However, rather than doing that within Ethereum itself, it does this on the RISC Zero VM. After producing a new block, they basically stick a proof on it, which can then be verified onchain (Ethereum) by anyone.
Why Zeth
According to the team, there were two reasons why they built Zeth:
Make it easier for devs to launch their own zk-powered apps
To test the performance of the EVM within their own zkVM (RISC Zero’s core product is its zkVM).
Type 0 zkEVM
RISC Zero claims that Zeth is a “Type 0” zkEVM.
“Because Zeth constructs standard Eth blocks, it can be thought of as Type 1 zkEVM”, but “because Zeth was built using standard Rust crates — the same crates used by popular full nodes like Reth — we like to think of it as a Type 0 zkEVM”.
However there’s a problem - in Vitalik’s original paper where he first described the different types of zkEVMs, there was no Type 0 - it was only:
Type 1: fully Ethereum-equivalent
Type 2: fully EVM-equivalent
Type 2.5: EVM-equivalent, except for gas costs
Type 3: almost EVM-equivalent
Type 4: high-level-language equivalent
Basically, the lower the tier, the closer the zkEVM is to Ethereum.
According to the paper, a Type 1 zkEVM’s goal is “to be able to verify Ethereum blocks as they are today”. However, @manasilvora, from the RISC Zero team, claims that “cause zeth makes no changes to Ethereum semantics and reuses code from Reth == full protocol compatibility with code reuse == type 0“.
But as @toghrulmaharram puts it, “Type 1 doesn't differentiate whether it's code compatibility or not. As long as you can prove the Ethereum block - you're Type 1”. What do you all think - should there be a new Type 0 category?
ZK Proofs In Minutes
As mentioned in Vitalik’s paper, typically it would take hours for a Type 1 zkEVM to generate proofs. This is because "Ethereum was not originally designed around ZK-friendliness".
So how is Zeth able to achieve low proving times? Well, this is thanks in large part to their use of “Continuations”, which they first introduced earlier this year.
Continuations split the proving process into three phases:
execution is split into “segments”
these segments are distributed to a pool of “workers” who generate zk-proofs of these segments. More workers = more efficiency.
these segment proofs are “rolled up”, and a new proof is generated for multiple segments (recursive proofs)
So what does Zeth enable?
Zeth is open source, meaning any team can integrate it into their EVM chain, or app, in order to turn that chain into a zk-rollup. This means ZK Bridges, ZK light clients, & more zk-enabled apps can be built without knowing how “zero knowledge” cryptography even works.
Aside from this, the RISC Zero team also claims that Zeth opens up the path for “the verge”.
As a reminder, several months ago, Vitalik produced an Ethereum roadmap, in which it was split into multiple phases:
The merge: this is when Ethereum switched from PoW to PoS
The surge
The scourge
The verge
The purge
The splurge
Going into the definitions of each of these is far out of reach to go over in this particular piece, but basically, the verge is all about switching from “Merkle Trees” to “Verkle Trees”, which then set us up for a “fully SNARKed Ethereum”.
“In the future, Zeth will be extended to include proof of consensus”, “this will enable users to fully sync with Ethereum L1 by verifying a single STARK proof.” In other words, rather than have to download and process every single previous Ethereum block in order to verify the chain (as is the case today), you’ll just need to verify a proof.
What’s Next
I think RISC Zero is definitely a name to keep an eye on if you’re a modular enthusiast. Just like sequencers, provers will also be an important component within the modular stack.
Over time, we’ll start seeing RaaS solutions integrate proving systems into their solutions, making zk another out-of-the-box component available to teams in “1-click”. Because RISC Zero is one of the core leaders in this prover space, it should be one of the first names we see integrated across solutions.
In fact, RISC Zero has already been selected as one of the two teams (O(1) Labs is the second team selected) to work on building a proving system for the OP Stack, which means we may see Optimism switch to a zk-rollup in the future, potentially with RISC Zero’s tech. Not only this, but RISC Zero is also already working with Eclipse to bring zk-rollups to the SVM (Solana's virtual machine).
To learn all about Zeth, along with checking out some of the performance metrics it has been able to achieve, check out the original post here.
More News & Announcements
Skip Protocol launches the Block SDK. In short, they just modularized Cosmos blocks by splitting them into different “lanes” (like small blocks within a block). Each “lane” is dedicated to something specific, such as a lane for free transactions, an oracle lane, an MEV lane, & a light client lane. While teams can leverage any of these out-of-the-box lanes for their own appchains, teams can also create their own custom lanes.
Saga announces “Ethlets”. Teams can leverage Saga to launch their own “Ethlet” - in other words, their own appchain that uses fraud proofs to settle on Ethereum. Ethlets “merges the best qualities of appchains and L2s and removes all of the disadvantage”.
Farcaster (social network) announces that they will be transitioning to OP mainnet, as they claim this is where most of their current active users are.
Dymension’s incentivized testnet is officially live. We wrote this thread to help you get started if you’re interested - it always pays to be an early adopter ;)
It was quite a week for the Altlayer, as the RaaS solution just announced its integration of the Sovereign SDK, as well as Avail onto its stack. Sovereign SDK adds to the current Rollup Framework options for developers to choose from when deploying their own rollup with AltLayer, while Avail provides developers with a second DA option (use Celestia, or Avail now).
Electron Labs developed the “ZK Light Client Security Module” adding a new ISM to the Hyperlane stack. “Electron's ZK light client allows you to validate the state of any blockchain at a given point in time without assuming trust in a third party.”
Starknet hit triple digit TPS 👀
Nautilus chain is now live on mainnet. As a reminder, Nautilus launched its own rollup with Eclipse in order to scale their payments platform.
Circle will be launching native USDC on six new chains over the next two months: Base, Cosmos (shout out Noble for enabling this one), Near, Optimism, Polkadot, and Polygon.
“Introducing Recproofs, a new vector commitment designed for concurrently proving both batched set inclusion and dynamic MapReduce style computations.”
Minters, a web3 gaming company, is transitioning to the MUD, “the onchain engine for autonomous worlds”.
Last week, a new proposal was made on the Starknet forum to have the network adopt the Tendermint consensus engine used in the Cosmos ecosystem - of course, Polygon is also a Tendermint adopter. Check out the linked thread to learn about what this transition would mean for Starknet.
Clave, a smart wallet powered by Account Abstraction, unveils itself. Here’s a short thread they wrote going over what their wallet has to offer.
$NEXT token airdrop updates. Looks like chains that were previously unaccounted for will now be receiving their share of tokens.
For anyone interested in running a node operator on Espresso
Once again, Eigen Layer reaches its max capacity of deposits within an hour. I mean, talk about a popular protocol that everyone wants a part of.
Someone ran an Avail light client on their phone already.
The Polygon Labs team held a Twitter Space last week where they ent over their Q2 achievements for the PoS chain, as well as their Q3 roadmap.
Starknet is expected to open source its STARK prover, Stone, this week during the Starknet Summit.
New Arbitrum deployments from this past week include Ormi Labs (data infra), Particle Network (full stack infra provider), LogX Trade (perps market aggregator), & more.
Here are the winners from the recent Optimism Superhack: On-Chain Review (Dev tools & Infra), Vanna Blockchain (“best OP Stack fork”), Eternal Commons (best public good app), & more.
“You can now use the Optimism bridge interface to bridge any arbitrary standard ERC20 token to OP Mainnet”
Redstone Oracles is now live on Optimism.
Check out the new look on Scroll’s website & docs.
Mantle staked 40K ETH from its treasury into Lido.
Here are some numbers after 1 month of Mantle’s (Eth L2) mainnet launch, including +22K active wallets, +2M transactions, & more.
Osmosis integrates Notify Network: real-time alerts & notifications about Osmosis sent directly to you.
Attention Somm Finance community, stSOMM has arrived.
📚 Discourse & Education
LSTs & Protocol Credibility
Jon Charb from DBA suggests that we, as a community, should be careful about where hard lines are drawn. Why? Because if you draw hard lines and let people cross them without repercussions, you lose credibility. Pretty straightforward.
There’s been a lot of discussion around liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and how they might grow increasingly dominant. Liquid staking is simply a very compelling value proposition. Wouldn’t you rather earn staking rewards AND put those “same” tokens in DeFi to earn more yield? As a thought experiment, imagine the percentage of tokens in liquid staking protocols gradually approached 100% of token supply over time.
Jon points out a comment by Ethereum Foundation’s Danny Ryan and how it contrasts with today’s reality. Jon’s concern:
Danny says protocols (or other entities) having over 1/3 staked tokens is a thread
Lido, a protocol, has over 1/3 staked tokens right now
If this is a hard line and it has been crossed, should we do something about it? Jon says this “weakens the fence of where social consensus is willing to step in”
If it’s not threatening enough to do something about, should we draw this hard line?
Jon’s goal (as usual) is to facilitate discourse. He’s not presenting a firm stance one way or the other. We agree that it’s important this conversation gets started before other scenarios arise where lines might be even more challenging to draw.
More Rollup Definitions
Ali Atiia from yAcademy presents an interesting set of rollup requirements. One thing to note is that L1 smart contracts, serving various purposes, are part of the requirements. By this classification, sovereign rollups would not count as rollups - talk about a spicy topic 🌶️
Another thing to note is that Ali bakes self-exit and opt-in upgrades into the rollup definition itself. Exit mechanisms are more commonly treated as rollup nice-to-haves than must-haves. “This rollup has forced inclusion and that one does not”. Ali is saying if a system doesn’t have exit mechanisms, it’s not a rollup.
Regardless of inidividual opinions, it’s worth noting that Ali’s classification is much more clear than most others (certainly most others we’ve seen).
More Discourse & Education
Lightspeed discusses the “why” of modular blockchains with Nick from Celestia and Neel from Eclipse 🎙️🔥
EigenLayer and Espresso teams discuss restaking on the Espresso sequencer 🎙️
@sachayve explores the risks of Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSDs) ✍️
@cemozer_ explains how to most optimally use Bitcoin as a rollup DA layer 💬
0xResearch discusses CoW Swap, MEV protection the evolution of solvers and more with Felix from CoW Swap 🎙️🧠
@0xCygaar walks through typical bridging user experiences in simple terms 💬💎
@GarrettHarper_ highlights 5 interesting things to know about Celestia 💬
ZK Validator discusses Interchain Privacy with Namada and Osmosis teams 🎙️🧠
@ryanberckmans shares thoughts on [Paradigm’s onchaing gaming article](https://www.paradigm.xyz/2023/08/onchain-games?) ✍️
Alchemy unpacks rollup-as-a-service in collaboration with the Caldera team ✍️
Bankless explains how 5 major rollups can eliminate centralization vectors 💬
@chaserchapman discusses Base governance, the Superchain, consumer apps and more with Jesse from Coinbase 🎙️
Celestia explains layers in the modular stack using a football analogy 💬💎
Bell Curve discusses Friend Tech, Base and the future of L2s 🎙️
Anoma explains how Collaborative Finance and Anoma complement each other ✍️
OP Labs explores maximizing fault proof modularity with a composable pre-image oracle ✍️
@francescoweb3 dives into the security tradeoffs made by Optimism, Arbitrum and Polygon rollups 💬
Aztec discusses building onchain games using ZK tech with the BattleZips team 🎙️
@barretodavid explains how Account Abstraction is implemented on Starknet and how to write an account contract ✍️
@asn_d6 explores Proof of Validator for Ethereum nodes to prove they are validators without revealing which one they are ✍️
@PossibltyResult explores the future of the Cosmos Hub ✍️
a16z Crypto explains why stateless blockchains are impossible ✍️
@awasunyin highlights key takeaways from the Namada <> Osmosis Space 💬
@0xNurstar breaks down Kakarot zkEVM and its roadmap 💬
@tonyolendo walks through building a ZK circuit using Circom 🎥
That's all for this week! Thanks for reading 🧱🎬