Bear market battle: Will ZK EVM end the public chain dispute?

Original source: R3PO official account

Introduction

Everything is based on technical characteristics The products sold at the selling point are all semi-finished products.

The hype and debate about EVM and ZK EVM have been going on for a while, especially after Vitalik made a division of the types of ZK EVM Afterwards, popular science articles about bytecode, virtual machine, compatibility and other awkward concepts emerged in an endless stream, but what these words mean, and where the popularity of ZK EVM will lead the public chain structure and other issues have not been clearly explained.

The ZK track is also officially hot, if the previous ZK-Rollup is limited to the L2 local area, so at this moment there is a vague tendency to become a general technology for the entire blockchain network. R3PO believes that ZK EVM will end the multi-chain coexistence pattern to some extent.

In this historical process of substitution, there will inevitably be an outbreak In order to launch more new projects, R3PO is committed to discovering hidden value. We will start with an "intelligent" understanding of EVM to explore the future direction of the public chain.

Imagine the following Scenario:

Alice wants to pass a Word document running on Windows to Bob, but Bob only has a Mac that can use Pages, so Bob can't open the document, how can I solve this problem? If Bob installs the Mac version of Word and copies the text in the article, there are still the following four ways:

1. Alice uploads the article to the cloud, such as Google Docs, Bob can open and edit the document on a cross-platform browser;

2. Alice hands Word.exe and the document to the other party, and Bob can use Crossover or a virtual machine (VM) to simulate a Windows environment so that you can run .exe applications and open documents on your Mac;

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Crossover can only support Word.exe to run alone, but can't do anything to other .exe applications;

The virtual machine (VM) will install a Windows subsystem in the Mac, and any .exe application can be run in the Windows subsystem;

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3. Alice converts the document into a file format that Java can understand and hands it over to the other party, and Bob can install the Java environment on the Mac to open the document;

4. Alice converts the document into a binary file and sends it to the other party, Bob can Open documents with the lowest level of compatibility.

If you can understand the above process, then try to replace the following concepts :

Windows and macOS and other operating systems --> Ethereum and Cosmos and other public chains;

.exe and .dmg and other application formats--> Dapps of different public chains;

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Word document--> on-chain assets;

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Crossover --> cross-chain bridge;

virtual machine (VM) --> lower Compatible EVM, such as Polygon Hermez is a kind of ZK VM, compared with EVM to realize the function, it needs manual iteration to keep synchronous update;

JVM --> EVM, language-level equivalent compatibility, such as the planned Scroll, which implements ZK EVM is completely equivalent to EVM, which can be understood as adding ZK feature version to EVM;

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Binary Compatibility--> This is EVM or Ethereum Ontology;

The characteristics of the entire VM and EVM are as described above, and its operation mode is basically similar to the process of transferring files across operating systems. In R3PO's view, the biggest trend is that ZK EVM will not only replace the existing EVM compatible solutions, but will eventually lead to Ethereum becoming the only application layer communication protocol, while other public chains will become specific-purpose chains in specific fields, similar to Linux Active in the server field, while Windows is active among ordinary users.

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As for the reasons for this conclusion, we will explain in detail below.

If you want to know others, you must first know yourself: the essence of ecology is the two-way rush of developers and users

EVM has promoted the victory of Ethereum in the public chain competition. This victory is not due to Ethereum's "computing power superiority", but mainly because of compatibility, because the older generation of Ethereum killers such as EOS , The previous generation of Ethereum killers such as Solona, and the new generation of Ethereum killers such as Aptos have advertised their own super high speed of TPS.

But Ethereum is still standing, in single digits TPS maintains an absolute leading position in TVL and number of Dapps. This advantage can be summed up as an ecological cluster effect. However, why has the gap not narrowed after other public chains have been compatible with EVM and vigorously built cross-chain bridges? Signs of further expansion?

R3PO believes that starting from a more definite starting point Get a solution to the problem.

This starting point is the experience of developers, the current Web 3 It is still in a very early stage and can be compared to the Internet before 2000. It is still the domain of geeks and early adopters. Even with the Token mechanism, most users are still settled in CeDeFi built by CEX and TradiFi. The real chain There are very few online users. The active addresses of Ethereum are only 400,000, but the TVL is as high as 32 billion U.S. dollars, and the market value is 200 billion U.S. dollars.

In the context of the huge contrast between the number of users and the amount of funds deposited Competing for the power of developers has become the most important way to maintain the ecology. The logic lies in who can persist until the launch of real billion-level consumer applications, and which public chain can truly become the infrastructure of the next generation Internet, just like the World Wide Web and Netscape Browser history.

The development experience that Ethereum gives developers is the most complete of.

In a sense, this is also a success for the Java language One kind of imitation, before Java, the biggest problem of C/C++ language is that programmers need to consider the adaptation of software and hardware. For example, 32-bit numeric types cannot be directly migrated to 16-bit machines for operation.

And Java In addition to improving the ease of use of the language, the biggest improvement lies in the design of the JVM. In a word, its characteristic lies in "hardware softening". The same adaptation to different hardware is realized through language scheduling. Once implemented in EVM, it can run on any device, truly realizing cross-platform development without additional consideration of hardware issues.

With the help of JVM, Java has become the most mainstream development language in the world One of them may not specialize in a certain field, but any field is applicable, which is the essence of compatibility.

The same is true for EVM and Ethereum development ecology, developers only It needs to be developed for EVM once, and then it can continue to follow the Ethereum ecology and make continuous progress, without considering the compatibility of public chain upgrades, hardware differences, etc.

Solidity and It is not perfect, and EVM is not without problems, but the best compatibility is enough to guarantee the loyalty of developers, and as more and more public chains are compatible with EVM, this compatibility becomes a passive benefit, and inter-chain migration work The volume is small enough, and other public chains are just localized versions of Ethereum Dapp, which is ultimately conducive to the dominance of the Ethereum ecosystem.

Compatible logic:

For developers: Compatible with EVM to reduce migration costs for Ethereum developers, and provide new public chain features such as higher TPS;< /p>

For users: provide a certain level of Token incentives to encourage users to migrate;

Complete the replacement of Ethereum.

Compatible logic loopholes:

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For developers: Compatible EVM is not a native EVM after all, and there is an invisible migration cost;

For users: The security of Ethereum is the highest except the Bitcoin network, this kind of security is not gold, airdrop The short-term temptation is comparable;

Result: Ethereum still occupies the most mainstream position.

Actually, other public chains are caught in a dilemma, compatible EVM is in danger of becoming the de facto sidechain of Ethereum, but incompatibility has the consequence of becoming an isolated island. Under the premise that everyone is eager for traffic, it becomes a last resort.

here At that time, it was mainly other public chains that took the initiative, while Ethereum was immersed in improving its old problems, such as PoW to PoS, L2 road selection, account abstraction, DankSharding, etc. On the compatible path, there are mainly implementation of EVM, with the help of The application implements three types of inter-chain compatible and EVM compatible chains.

The public chain realizes EVM compatibility, represented by BNB Chain and so on.

Exchange public chains such as BNB Chain or OKX Chain, rely on The user base of the exchange, as well as its ability to operate the project, its TVL and ecology on the chain should not be underestimated. Taking BNB Chain as an example, according to DeFi Llama data, there are 492 protocols running on it, and the TVL reaches 6 billion US dollars. According to the scale In terms of volume and volume, it is the second largest public chain after Ethereum.

Its main mode of operation "imitates" Ethereum, such as The largest DEX on it, Pancakeswap, was the earliest forked version of Uniswap. The same Dapp can seamlessly switch between the two public chains. Behind it is the huge advantage brought by EVM compatibility. The project side only needs to focus on operations, not Develop products from scratch.

On-chain EVM compatibility, represented by Solona.

Solona is a single block chain with PoH mechanism , and has long been the only public chain not compatible with EVM among the top ten public chain projects by market value, but it does not mean that it cannot communicate with EVM-compatible chains. The Neon project running on the chain provides EVM compatibility.

This kind of compatibility can be understood as nesting doll compatibility, Instead of direct compatibility at the level of the public chain ontology.

Neon provides a development experience that is highly similar to the EVM itself, For example, Solidity language programming support, seamless smart contract deployment experience, direct calls to MetaMask, and development kits such as Truffle.

Compatible with EVM chain, represented by EVMOS.

Cosmos or Polkadot and other modular blockchains can There are more options, and the applications on it can become L1-level public chains alone, while EVMOS is also a sub-chain of Cosmos and a public chain that provides EVM compatibility, which means that Evmos can not only be used between Cosmos "Pass-through" EVM compatibility, EVM compatibility can be provided between any other public chains.

In addition to being an EVM compatibility provider, it can also DeFi and other applications are deployed as a public chain. For example, the DEX Exswap on it is a forked version of Uniswap.

Summary of this paragraph: Positive It is this extensive compatibility that has contributed to the opening up of the entire public chain world, and the links are EVM compatibility, cross-chain bridges, and exchanges. In view of this, R3PO has summarized the specific genres of the above compatibility to provide ZK EVM The role of the Terminator is warming up before the game.

If you want to win, you must first win: ZK EVM is the initiative of Ethereum

< p>If other public chains are busy being compatible with EVM, Ethereum is too busy to take care of itself, but after the PoS merger is successful and the L2 technology route is determined, ZK has become a common technology for the entire public chain track, and the combination of ZK technology and EVM will also promote The evolution of Ethereum's modular architecture is complete.

ZK technology is not limited to the L2 field, it can be found in Dapp, public chain and other upper and lower layers Where it can be used, and the current hottest ZK EVM track is a bit mixed, R3PO will briefly sort out this, and strive to eliminate the chaff and keep the chaff.

Vitalik Zeng Given the relationship between the compatibility and performance of different EVM classifications, it can be found that the lower the implementation level, the stronger the compatibility, but the worse the performance. This reason is actually very simple. Think about the poor performance of the Ethereum mainnet. And strong security can be understood.

The closer to the bottom layer, the closer to the native EVM mode of operation , the stronger the compatibility, but the performance will also be severely limited;

The closer to the upper layer, the more it tests the compatibility of its own EVM The greater the difference between the capabilities of the solution and the native EVM of Ethereum, the worse the compatibility, but it will also bring stronger customization freedom and greatly optimize performance.

Polygon Hermez was mentioned earlier and attributed to The category is listed as ZK VM, but in fact Hermez claims to be a ZK EVM solution, which seems to be a letter difference, but its compatibility and security are quite different.

ZK VM/EVM implemented on Polygon Hermez, essentially The function of EVM is "reproduced" one by one, similar to the relationship between WBTC and BTC, the relationship between shadow and ontology. In daily operation, as long as the development team keeps updating, its user experience is the same as that of EVM. It is not a language-level implementation. It can only be said that this is a whitewash under commercial competition.

Recently, StarkNet released ZK EVM Kakarot using Cairo language, Used to run Ethereum smart contracts on StarkNet, it can be considered as the ZK EVM that entered the testing stage for the first time. Other ZK EVM players such as Taiko, Scroll, and zkSync 2.0 are on the road.

Why ZK EVM has become such a hot track, and why Is this the terminator of the public chain? At present, in the stage of commercial competition, the information released by various project parties is not comprehensive. R3PO tries to give its own understanding, and it is right to throw a brick to attract jade.

For the first One question, the answer is that ZK EVM is actually the real place for future Dapps.

In the existing cognition, Dapp either runs on the public on-chain, or run on the L2 network. But in R3PO's view, the ZK EVM will directly host the application layer in the future.

As shown in the figure above, the future ZK EVM will become EVM , Rollup and cross-chain bridge functions, which itself is a kind of EVM does not need to be explained, so we will focus on explaining the latter two functions.

L2 level Rollup is too low level, in order to pursue higher Performance, still take StarkNet developed by StarkWare as an example. It plans to use ZK recursion to prove the validity of the verification data. As an authentication layer for applications, L3 on top of it.

The cross-chain bridge itself is easier to understand, the cross-chain bridge The essence of ZK is to exchange and transfer assets between different public chains. If EVM compatibility is achieved with each other, there is no need for a cross-chain bridge as an intermediary. ZK itself is more secure than the current cross-chain bridge solution with frequent loopholes. Therefore, ZK EVM is a better cross-chain bridge solution.

For the second question, the answer is that the ZK EVM will The entire public chain becomes the EVM chain.

Even if companies such as Solona and Aptos are not compatible with EVM It can also be accessed through Evmos, etc. From this perspective, ZK EVM is an active attack of Ethereum. If you don’t access me, I will be compatible with you. In this way, the ecological advantages of Ethereum will be further magnified. .

Move ecological public chains such as Aptos and Sui, etc. The declared Move VM is also a development mechanism similar to EVM. In theory, the Move language transformed from Rust is indeed better than Solidity, but its biggest disadvantage is that time does not wait for anyone. Its own traffic and ecology are questionable, and this will fall into the dilemma of whether other public chains are compatible with EVM.

Conclusion

Whether a public chain can succeed in the market depends on its own struggle. But also consider the course of history.

In the development process of ZK EVM, we can clearly perceive the difficulty of the public chain behind it , In the tug-of-war between Ethereum and other public chains, endless romantic stories have been created. At this time, Match Point has come to the life and death situation of new species such as EVMOS and Move VM and ZK EVM. R3PO believes that future The public chain structure must be based on the interoperability and interconnection brought about by EVM compatibility as the premise of competition, and users and developers are still the whole point of the story.

If the ZK EVM goes well, it is very likely that the Ethereum Fangfang has become the Windows of the public chain world, running the most abundant application layer, ensuring itself as the safest and most stable settlement layer.

ZK technology is at least 5 years away from large-scale maturity The time, under the large-scale ripening of capital and the market, may slow down to about 3 years, and then we will be able to witness whether today's prediction will come true.

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