4 Zero-Knowledge Rollups Released Last Week – Here’s Why They Are Important

Ethereum is crypto’s dominant layer-1 blockchain, and it’s not even close. It doesn’t matter whether you're talking about size, innovative protocols, longevity, security, or decentralization, Ethereum takes the crown.

However, Ethereum is not without its faults.

Although newer entrants into crypto have not yet seen it, Ethereum is prone to issues during periods of high congestion. These issues manifest themselves in the form of slow and expensive transactions. So expensive that people created other (less secure and decentralized) blockchains just so they can transact on-chain again.

If Ethereum had these issues when crypto has a few million users, imagine the problems when crypto has a few billion users.

Obviously, the network would be unable to handle it.

This is why the builders got building on scaling solutions. So far, the solutions have taken the form of the optimistic rollups Optimism and Arbitrum, which we covered in depth here and here.

Optimism and Arbitrum work well, and we think they have a bright future. However, many of crypto’s smartest developers (including Ethereum founder Vitalik) do not believe they are the final scaling solution. Instead, they are bullish on zero-knowledge rollups (ZKRs).

What’s A ZKR?

ZKRs are among the most technical topics in crypto, so we’ll only cover the extreme basics here. If you want to dive in further, this breakdown is a good place to start.

ZKRs are built with zero-knowledge proofs. ZK proofs use cryptography to prove that they know something without revealing what they know or how they know it. So, for example, you can use a ZK proof to certify that you own an NFT without revealing which NFT you own, when you purchased it, or how much you spent on it.

ZKRs make use of these ZK proofs to supercharge Ethereum scalability. ZKRs take a batch (by a batch, we mean hundreds of thousands to millions) of transactions, roll them up, and then use the ZK proof to show Ethereum that the transactions are legitimate without Ethereum having to do any work to verify it themselves.

The result is an ultimate level of scalability.

However, great rewards come with great difficulty, and ZKRs that can run Ethereum applications have proven notoriously difficult to build.

But, that’s now changing.

The ZKR Era Has Begun

In the last week, there has been a Cambrian explosion of ZKR releases:

• It began on March 20th with the release of Immutable zkEVM, a web3 game chain powered by ZK technology.

• Then, last Friday, zkSync finally released their long-awaited zkEVM mainnet.

• Not to be outdone, Polygon released their own zkEVM on Monday, fully equipped with Vitalik performing the symbolic first transaction.

• Finally, on Tuesday, ConsenSys launched their zkEVM, Linea.

So, that’s 4 major ZKR releases in a little over a week. For a vertical that saw basically no public movement for years, this is a major development.

Why Does This Matter For You?

You might be reading this article and asking yourself, “so what?” Why in the world should you care about these obscure rollups?

The most obvious answer is that ZKRs will make Ethereum massively more scalable. Congestion will become nonexistent, and high gas fees and slow transaction times will be a thing of the past. Ethereum will truly become a network capable of facilitating the decentralized alternative financial system.

But maybe you still don’t care about that. Maybe you’re just an investor looking for portfolio exposure to crypto’s most touted commodity. Or maybe you’re just holding ETH to rake in flashy long-term gains.

In either case, you should still care about ZKRs.

If ZKRs is as good at scaling Ethereum in practice as it is in theory, then Ethereum will become much more popular. This means that more and more people will be using Ethereum, which should raise demand for ETH, which in turn should make ETH more valuable. In other words, ZKRs are extremely bullish for ETH.

Ultimately, whether you’re a tech head, an Ethereum enthusiast, or an ETH investor, the recent ZKR surge is a very positive development.