Top zk-rollups to watch in 2023–2024

Polly Traore
HashEx Security Blog
5 min readJun 7, 2023

The dawn of zk-rollups

The year is 2023. For a long time, developers have been trying to solve the blockchain trilemma of scalability-security-decentralization. A number of new Ethereum layer-2 solutions or rollups are emerging in order to take on that task. Many of them are zk-rollups, meaning they are based on zero-knowledge proofs (more theory on SNARKs and STARKs here). The benefits are scalability, privacy, and security, while the problem is that they are difficult to build.

According to Vitalik Buterin, zk-rollups will eventually outperform optimistic rollups (e.g. Arbitrum, Optimism) and win the scaling layer-2 war. With years already in the making, it looks like the time has finally come and we are about to witness a new era of Ethereum. We can verify this by looking at the constant increase in TVL in L2 solutions. In the past 2 years, we have seen the rise and flourishing of optimistic layer 2s, the importance of which I by no means want to downplay in this article. In the next 2 years, we can expect a similar story for zero-knowledge (or validity) rollups. Are you excited yet? Let’s dive into it.

zkSync Era

After launching zkSync Lite in 2020 and successfully developing it, Matter Labs launched zkSync Era mainnet in March 2023. Unlike Lite it is a zkEVM rollup that allows developers to use tested code and apply years of experience of working with Solidity. SNARK technology was chosen For zk-proofs over STARK due to its speed and computational power requirements.

Era’s ecosystem is constantly growing. It already includes over 50 projects of all kinds: from infrastructure and wallets to defi and games. zkSync has partnered with BitDAO, one of the biggest DAOs out there. It will be governed by zkDAO which aims to promote growth in its ecosystem by incentivizing projects and initiatives.

One of the zkSync features currently in development is Account Abstraction. It’s expected to allow web2 user onboarding with well-known “social login” systems, e.g. login/password or email.

Here, an in-depth article on zkSync is available for those seeking.

StarkNet

Starknet is a permissionless decentralized zk-rollup. Developed by Starkware, it has been live since late 2021, however, it is not EVM-compatible.

Starknet is based on the Cairo programming language, which is optimized for zk-proofs. To enable smart contracts & composability, StarkNet takes a language-level compatibility approach & transpiles EVM-friendly languages (e.g. Solidity) down to a STARK-friendly VM (in Cairo).

The chain is also developing kits for Account Abstraction which will reduce the onboarding complexity for users and can be considered one of the main mass adoption tools.

There are more than 70 applications running on the mainnet today, and many more are moving towards it at full throttle.

Starknet’s current development primary focus is on performance and UX. As stated in their roadmap for 2023, we can expect fee and latency reduction as well as throughput improvements later this year.

Scroll

Scroll is a classic zkEVM rollup currently in the Alpha Testnet phase. It went live in February on Goerli network. The team behind Scroll prioritizes EVM equivalence and a community-oriented approach. Indeed, there are community-friendly deeds on their list such as sharing found vulnerabilities with Aztec and Linea or hosting a ZK Symposium that helped boost the discussion about the cutting-edge technology in rollup space.

From a technological point of view, Scroll rivals Polygon zkEVM as they have a similar bytecode-level approach. However, the former can be considered more EVM-compatible than the latter.

The ecosystem already consists of more than 30 projects and is growing steadily. Scroll has its own security team, which assists in keeping the code correct and up-to-date. An in-depth review is available on one of the co-founders’, Ye Zhang’s HackMD page.

Linea

ConsenSys, the team that created Metamask, is building a zkEVM rollup. The testnet was released on March 28 and is live now.

As a rollup Linea is being built with a developer-centric approach. In order to reach it, zk-proofs are combined with full EVM-equivalence, allowing developers to create scalable dApps or migrate existing ones seamlessly. The ecosystem already numbers more than 30 applications of all different kinds.

There is an ongoing voyage campaign that aims at stress-testing the current testnet version. Another goal of this voyage is to support Linea’s mainnet release later this summer. Everyone is welcome to participate using Goerli ETH which can be claimed at certain faucets for free. Users are rewarded for completing challenges via a series of Linea NFTs.

Polygon zkEVM

As stated in the documentation, Polygon zkEVM is a decentralized Ethereum Layer 2 scalability solution that absorbed Mir and Hermez rollup as well as its earlier developments. The project has been under development since mid-2022 and the Mainnet Beta launched on March 27. As of today, there are less than 20 dapps in its ecosystem. It is important to remember that it’s using ETH for gas and not MATIC.

Not being fully EMV-compatible, but with a high degree of EVM equivalence in Polygon, zkEVM provides developers and users with an experience similar to using Ethereum mainnet, though with much more privacy, speed, and at a lower cost.

One of the unique features of this rollup is a novel consensus mechanism called Proof-of-Efficiency (PoE) which was designed to address the challenges of sequencer decentralization.

Here is another more in-depth article, this time on Polygon zkEVM.

Taiko

The project was founded in early 2022 by a group of well-known developers some of whom have experience working with zk-rollups at Loopring.

Taiko is aimed for maximum compatibility with EVM, it can even be said that Taiko is an equivalent of Ethereum. This offers a lot of benefits to developers, for example, they can seamlessly migrate smart contracts and dApps to Taiko. However, pursuing such a degree of compatibility comes with disadvantages, the main one being slow zk-proof generation speed. They aim to overcome it by means of parallel proof verification for different blocks on L2.

Taiko is an open-source rollup and the code is available on the project’s github.

Here, a more detailed overview of Taiko is available.

Aztec

Following the shutdown of their zk.money project, the Aztec team decided to pivot to creating its own hybrid zk-rollup for Ethereum. Aztec uses Noir zk programming language for its smart contracts. Therefore, it’s not EVM-compatible nor is it a zkEVM blockchain. The idea behind “hybrid” is to enable both public and private smart contract execution. In many ways it resembles StarkNet with one major difference: Aztec prioritizes encryption and privacy.

The project is in early development, so a Bug Bounty program is available. Its goal is to achieve the code’s safety. The team has also included a grant program for developers in order to attract new projects to the ecosystem.

You can find more detailed info about Aztec and its features on zero-knowledge future in the project’s Medium.

Follow HashEx DeFi Intelligence Ecosystem:
Announcement Channel
Twitter

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

Published in HashEx Security Blog

HashEx — #1 DeFi security provider, blockchain consulting and development, smart contract audits

No responses yet

What are your thoughts?