Hi, my name is Paul, and today I'd like to talk to you about the next zk project -ZKM.

Blockchain 'impossible triangle'

     A basic public chain needs to take into account the three elements of function, performance and network. However, there is an "impossible triangle" in the blockchain: a blockchain project cannot meet the three at the same time, only two conditions can be met at the same time, scalability, decentralization, and security.

     For example, we are familiar with BTC and ETH are looking at decentralization and security, at the expense of scalability.

The Ethereum expansion debate

     As the ecosystem of Ethereum becomes more and more, more and more Dapps are deployed on it, but as mentioned above, because Ethereum chooses to sacrifice scalability, the throughput of the network cannot go up, resulting in the inability of Dapps to expand to users on a large scale.

     Of course, not only network throughput issues, but also high Gas costs, long transaction waiting times, etc. are important factors, and these factors also put pressure on Ethereum developers to make more innovations.

     From the very beginning of sharding -> State Channels and Plasma-> Shadow Chain and Rollups.

     The current mainstream trend is Rollups: by putting data down the chain for processing, it can effectively improve Ethereum throughput by reducing transaction data size and transaction time, thereby saving Gas and expanding the scalability of Ethereum.

View Rollups from a user's perspective

     Looking at the current classification of Rollup from the perspective of user usage, we can see that Optimistic Rollup costs relatively low Gas, but the cost is delayed finalization in exchange for security (7-day fraud challenge period).

     For the ZK Rollups, there are no other disadvantages except high Gas levels for our users, but it is very difficult for the project to take a small step forward, as can be seen from the speed of ZK Rollups launch on the market now, because it takes a long time to be compatible with EVM.

     For Optimistic Rollups, the 7-day challenge period is a long wait for optimistic Rollups who want to withdraw money quickly, which is likely to lead to attacks. For ZK Rollups, the EVM is unstable because the EVM design changes frequently. To be compatible, zkEVM needs to change accordingly.

Which one would you choose as a user?

     In fact, the project side or programmer should not ask the user this question. I still remember that when Paul worked in Web2 company before, the product manager once told me that a good product should not let the user care about the underlying implementation, but let the user get started quickly after getting the product, and they can complete the effect they want with just a few points.

     Similarly, the user should not be asked to choose between Optimistic Rollups and ZK Rollups, but should have the same seamless experience and security as L1 with high network throughput.

     If you are now a project manager, if you want to develop a Rollups product, it is not necessary to solve their disadvantages on the premise of compatibility with both to cover a wider range of application scenarios.

Hybrid Rollup

     Hybrid Rollup is a chimera that puts ZK Rollup inside Optimistic Rollup. To cover as many use cases as possible.

     The initial phase of a Hybrid Rollup looks like an Optimistic Rollup. Most withdrawal transactions can be processed using ZK proof of validity to bypass the usual 7-day fraud challenge phase (if the smart contract's Settings are met). Those who fail the validity check will still enter the optimistic fraud challenge phase. But with Hybrid Rollups, it is possible to make the fraud challenge window much longer (because those who want to bypass the proof of fraud window, be it 7 days or more, can bypass it with proof of validity, an option not available in Optimistic Rollup).

     Through the above design, users are free to choose their own acceptable fraud challenge window, if you want to quickly raise you can choose to use ZK to bypass, and if Ethereum and other L1 received malicious attacks or some nodes are hijacked, you can choose to challenge the challenge window to 15-30 days to make the attack more difficult.

That only solves the Optimistic Rollup problem?

For this problem, the ZKM team came up with its own efficient ZK Rollup component, called zkMIPS.

MIPS

     We all know that pipelining is one of the most basic concepts in modern processors: it is a quasi-parallel processing implementation technology that refers to the operation of multiple instructions overlapping during the execution of a program. Generally speaking, a sequential process is decomposed into several sub-processes, each of which can be effectively executed at the same time as other sub-processes. This idea originally appeared in the architecture of RISC to improve the processing efficiency of the processor, striving to complete one instruction in a clock cycle.

     One of the most classic is MIPS (no interlock pipelining phase of the microprocessor), the MIPS architecture itself is designed for pipelining, the cpu runs in the cache, the execution process of each instruction is divided into five levels.

     Here you know that MIPS is used to increase the processing speed.

zkMIPS

     zkMIPS is an advanced L2 aggregation solution and architecture that leverage-MIPS (microprocessors without interlocking pipelined-phase) architecture (a class of Reduced Instruction set computer (RISC) CPU instructions) and leverage-the power of zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) to achieve its goals.

     The zkMIPS architecture consists of Sequencer and Validator L2 nodes, as well as Validator, Verifier and Synchronizer L1 smart contracts.

Specific process can refer to the official resolution: https://docs.zkm.io/technology/software-system-architecture

项目信息

Official website: https://www.zkm.io/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProjectZKM

Discord: https://discord.gg/6BFNKJfS

Document: https://docs.zkm.io/

Project team:

Personal opinion

     The Ethereum expansion debate is a never-ending process and a never-ending story. The future of Ethereum is definitely the Rollups with L1 as the consensus and L2 as the extension, and the Hybrid Rollup that combines the two will also occupy a position in this expansion debate, which is very worthy of our study and attention.