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ZKSync Ecological Project: Summarize the features and differences of zksync lite and zksync Era

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zksync and starknet have not been issued yet. Learn about zksync lite and the era project

原文标题：《 ZKSync 项目浅析：一文了解 zksync lite 及 zksync Era 》

Source: Yinan, PANews

zkSync:

zkSync is a public chain based on the Layer 2 of Ethereum that uses ZK rollup technology to solve Ethereum's current scalability issues. The mission is to increase the throughput of Ethereum and to adequately preserve its fundamental values -- freedom, autonomy, decentralization -- on a large scale.

In zkSync, calculations are performed off-chain, and most data is also stored off-chain. Since all transactions are certified on the Ethereum backbone, users enjoy the same level of security as Ethereum.

zkSync 1.0 -- zkSync Lite launched on the Ethereum mainnet on June 15, 2020

Transaction throughput of about 300 TPS is achieved, but it is not compatible with EVM.

zkSync 2.0 -- zkSync Era launched on 24th March 2023. First, implement arbitrary smart contract features by supporting Solidity (via zkEVM) and Zinc (rollup's internal programming language); Second, throughput increases exponentially to 20,000+ TPS with zkPorter, a protocol that combines zkRollups and sharding.

Major differences between zkSync 1.0 and zkSync 2.0

Smart contract supportzkSync 1.0 focuses on simplified payment and asset transfer scenarios and does not support Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible smart contracts. Instead, zkSync 2.0 offers full support for EVM-compatible smart contracts, which means developers can easily deploy existing Ethereum smart contracts to zkSync 2.0.

Composability:While zkSync 1.0 supports limited cross-contract interaction, zkSync 2.0 improves interoperability between protocols by preserving key EVM features such as smart contract composability. This makes zkSync 2.0 better suited for building complex decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

Account abstraction:zkSync 2.0 introduces a new feature for account abstraction that simplifies the interaction between users and smart contracts. Account abstraction improves the user experience by allowing users to interact with smart contracts using any signature scheme.

More powerful development tools:zkSync 2.0 comes with a suite of development tools, including the CLI (command line interface) and SDK (software development kit), to make it easier for developers to build and deploy ZKSync-based applications.

ZKSync 项目浅析：一文了解 zksync lite 及 zksync Era

zkSync Era features

Ethereum and ERC20 token transfers have instant confirmation and fast finality on L1.

Transaction fees for ERC20 tokens and Ethereum transfers on the mainnet are very low.

It is easy to use the tokens being transferred to make payments to existing Ethereum addresses, including smart contracts.

zkSync Era highlights

Provides mainnet-level security and does not rely on a third party.

EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) without license compatible smart contract.

Standard Web3 API.

Preserve key EVM features, such as composability of smart contracts.

Introduce new features such as account abstraction.

team

Matter labs is the company behind zkSync, a company from Germany founded by CEO Alex G. Founded in 2018, it has grown to more than 50 employees. The team is made up of experienced developers, researchers, and entrepreneurs, as well asa core of communications members such as Zoe Gadsden (COO), Ankur Rakshit (CFO), Steve Newcomb (CPO), and Shazia Hasan. They are working together to create a more efficient, cost-effective and secure way to transact Ethereum.

CEO: Alex Gluchowski-- He has over 15 years of development experience and has evolved as a CTO and entrepreneur. He is passionate about personal freedom, self-ownership and decentralization.

COO: Zoe Gadsden-- Zoe is a former Google employee with more than 10 years of growth and product leadership

CFO: Ankur Rakshit-- Has 15 years of experience in the financial sector and was previously Head of Financial Planning and Analysis at Kraken.

CPO: Steve Newcomb-- a successful entrepreneur and product manager with over 15 years of experience in the industry and accelerator programs.

Head of Marketing and Communications: Shazia Hasan-- Various experiences in finance and communications

Thanks to its diverse background, the team was able to navigate several key aspects of building a blockchain and running a company. These are very important points because the goal of the project is widespread adoption.

financing

Matter Labs has raised $258 million in five funding rounds since 2018, and BitDAO has provided an additional $200 million in funding commitments to guide the zkSync ecosystem in five tranches of $40 million.

$200 million Series C round led by Dragonfly and Blockchain Capital in November 2022.

A $200 million commitment from BitDAO in January 2022.

$50 million Series B financing led by a16 z in November 2021.

A $6 million Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures in February 2021

A $2 million seed round led by Placeholder in September 2019

BitDAO's $200 million funding commitment will play an important role in ecosystem development. The DAO is dedicated to expanding the zkSync ecosystem through active funding in various areas:

Seventy percent of the funds will be used for strategic capital investments in areas such as DeFi, NFTs, gaming, privacy, interoperability, and even liquidity provision.

7.5% of the funds will be allocated to grants to develop tools to migrate from L1 to L2 to accelerate adoption and encourage further investment and research by industry participants.

7.5% of the funds will fund staff employed by security audit firms to secure ecosystems and create security knowledge and standards.

5% of the funding will be allocated to the research and development, to improve the zkProofs and related technology

Five percent will be allocated to education and training about the opportunities technology offers and their impact and five percent will be allocated to operations such as legal setup, compliance and payroll.

Investments will be selected by the decision-making committee based on the objectives and objectives identified in the first phase. These milestones may include the number of investments made, grants awarded, impact of funded public goods, contributions to DAO core tools, and any other metrics that the steering committee and funding team decide to include.

Road map

At present, Fair Onboarding Alpha phase and zksync 2.0 main network launch phase have been carried out

The next stage is going to be the Layer 3 concept

Layer 2 is the first step towards scalability, developer experience, and user experience. zkSync's EVM-compatible Layer 3 proof-of-concept "Opportunity" will debut in the first quarter of 2023, bringing a series of 10-fold long moments to Ethereum. Will provide:

The Layer 3 HyperChain prototype, built on top of Layer 2, allows the ecosystem to research and experiment.

Start developing developer tools, including the CLI and SDK for creating and interacting with Layer 3.

It will end with:decentralization

To support Ethereum's mission, the zkSync 2.0 protocol will be decentralized, including proof generation, block production, and transaction verification. Already thinking about how to decentralize the parts of the system and will provide clear instructions on how to run the nodes.

Token economics

So far, according toThe blockAlex Gluchowski, CEO of Matter Labs, had this to say about tokens in an interview:

The launch of the ZkSync Era will not initially come with tokens, as the network is still largely centralized for now. Since it is in alpha, Matter Labs can upgrade the code of the network at will. In addition, the company still controls the sequencer and prover, two core components of how the network operates.

Once you want to decentralize the collator, you need the token. Everything has to have a purpose and a reason. To participate in the verifier set without permission, we don't have anything better than tokens right now -- like how you can make it permissionless. But for now, because we're on this sequencer, it's not necessary yet, "Gluchowski said.

He estimates that sequencers will be decentralized within a year or so. That means the token will probably be released in a year or so.

ecosystem

Matter Labs claims that over 150 projects have been deployed or are willing to be deployed on the chain, but not that many are really available at the moment. There are banxa, zigzag, etc., on lite, At present, mute, mint square, spacefi, orbiter, syncswap and so on have synced Era.

TVL

As can be seen from defillama, the overall TVL has increased by 400% in the last 7 days until the publication of this document. Currently, the total lock-in volume of zksync is $50 million, among which Syncswap project accounts for nearly 50% of the total lock-in volume, which is a fast growth rate. TVL relative Arbitrum of 2.5 billion and 1 billion Optimism is still a large gap, of course, this and the project ecology and the adoption of technology, at present in arb and op projects have reached more than 100, zksync currently has only a handful of applications on the Era. arb and op both use optimistic Rollup, while zksync and starknet both use zk Rollup, which is more technically difficult than the former.

summarize

First of all, zksync has attracted much attention from both the team and project financing, and the technology is also adopted by Zk-Rollup. Because of the technical characteristics of zk, the development difficulty is higher, but its security is higher. In the long run, Zk-rollup will be the mainstream in the future. In terms of project ecology, there is a big gap between zksync and Arb and OP. The previous 1.0 was not compatible with EVM, and the Ethereum ecosystem could not carry out migration well. At present, after the 2.0 Era came online, it began to be compatible with EVM, so that Ethereum ecological applications could be migrated more easily. I believe that zksync will have a good performance in the future, and look forward to the future development of zksync.