Immutable’s zkEVM to eliminate Web3 gaming gas fees

December 13, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Ethereum scaling firm =nil; Foundation introduces security-focused zkEVM

December 12, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Polygon 2.0 – 2024 to see unified ZK-powered L2 chains

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Starknet and zkSync buck trend as crypto ecosystems shed devs by 28%

October 19, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Active Monthly Developers

Monthly active developers across the crypto ecosystem fell 28% year-on-year in October, though some have managed to buck the trend.

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions Starknet and zkSync are among the few platforms to have increased their total monthly active developer counts over the last 12 months, data shows.

While Starknet and zkSync only recorded increases of 3% and 6% respectively, the likes of Ethereum, Polygon and Solana saw their counts fa by 23%, 43% and 57% respectively over the same timeframe, according to an updated developer report by Electric Capital, which provided data up to Oct. 1.

Total monthly active developers fell 27.7% from 26,701 developers to 19,279, reflecting a wider downward trend in developers over the last 12 months.

*Monthly active developers in the cryptocurrency ecosystem since 2015. Source: Electric Capital*

Chainlink, Stellar, Aztec Protocol and Ripple also increased their developer counts as of Oct. 1, though their total monthly active developers were lower than zkSync and Starknet.

StarkWare’s Starknet and Matter Labs’ zkSync are layer 2 solutions aimed at scaling Ethereum through zero-knowledge rollups, which have become a focal point in 2023.

Much of Starknet’s focus of late has revolved around its “Quantum Leap” — which went live in July. It can theoretically increase Ethereum’s TPS (transactions per second) from around 13-15 to 37 TPS consistently and up to 90 TPS in some cases.

Starknet and zkSync have also been working on zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) solutions to further scale Ethereum throughout 2023.

Developers at zkSync have also been building a network of “Hyperchains” to create an ecosystem of interoperable protocols and sovereign chains as part of its zero-knowledge tech stack. The firm unveiled the solution in June and hope to have a working version of it by end of 2023.

In a thread on X on Oct. 18, Electric Capital software engineer Enrique Herreros noted many of the departing active monthly developers were “newcomers” (less than one year), while the more “established” (more than two years) and “emerging” (one to two years) developers have remained relatively steady over the last 12 months:

“We can see a decrease of -58% in Newcomers, a moderate increase of +11% Emerging Developers and a slight increase of +5% Established Developers,” Enrique said.

.@electriccapital’s Developer October Update is here! This is a lighter weight update as we prepare for our annual report.

We inspected 164M+ crypto commits to find:
• 19.3K monthly active open source developers as of October 1, 2023
• Developers have decreased -27% YoY
•… pic.twitter.com/bHyMHx29El
— Enrique ⚡ (@eherrerosj) October 18, 2023

Enrique noted this is a cyclical trend where newcomers dominate the developer market during bull markets but then fall in numbers when prices begin to plummet.

Electric Capital typically obtains its data from code repos and code commits on open-source developer platform GitHub.

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Ethereum layer 2 zkEVM ‘Scroll’ confirms mainnet launch

October 17, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Blockchain data from Etherscan suggest Scroll’s mainnet was live over a week ago.

Scroll, a new contender in the zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) space that works to scale the blockchain, has confirmed the launch of its mainnet.

The team behind Scroll announced the launch in an Oct. 17 post and added that existing applications and developer tool kits on Ethereum can now migrate to the new scaling solution.

“Everything functions right out of the box,” the Scroll team said.

After more than two years of building, we are thrilled to announce the launch of Scroll Mainnet.

As we open the doors to Mainnet, we want to take a moment to reflect on our journey thus far pic.twitter.com/WKfkjyIkB0
— Scroll (@Scroll_ZKP) October 17, 2023

A zkEVM solution such as Scroll’s aims to provide lower transaction costs at a higher throughput for decentralized applications running on Ethereum.

It works by batching thousands of transactions off-chain into one, then submitting a proof consisting of a minimal data summary to Ethereum’s mainnet.

Blockchain data suggests Scroll had withheld the news that its mainnet was live since Oct. 8 — the date at which the first smart contract was deployed on thScroll mainnet, according to Etherscan data.

Scroll said the mainnet launch came after 15 months of extensive testing and security audits across three separate testnets.

“Our bridge and rollup contracts were audited by OpenZeppelin and Zellic,” Scroll added. Its zkEVM circuits were reviewed by Trail of Bits, Zellic, and KALOS.

Across its three testnets over 450,000 smart contracts were deployed enabling over 90 million transactions across 9 million blocks. 280,000 ZK-proofs were also generated the firm said.

pic.twitter.com/BujREyNGqi
— Scroll (@Scroll_ZKP) October 17, 2023

About a month ago, Scroll co-founder Ye Zhang told Cointelegraph Scroll would launch with centralized features but plans to increasingly decentralize over time.

“We will have a centralized sequencer and the central approver button,” Zhang said. He added a plan is in place to remove that button, however.

“We have a roadmap [...] To solve the single point of failure and to incentivize the community to build better proving hardware.”

Zhang said the Scroll team will also pitch several proposals to let the community discuss what’s best for Scroll moving forward.

Scroll was founded in 2021 with the goal to be more community-driven. Other zkEVM solutions working to scale Ethereum include Polygon, zkSync, StarkWare and Immutable.

Jordi Baylina, technical lead of Polygon Hermez zkEVM, recently told Cointelegraph that such competition in the zkEVM space is only going to make the Ethereum ecosystem more robust:

“Having different projects adds a lot of experience, and it’s also a way to test different approaches, ways of handling things or solving things,” he said.

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Idealistic Ethereum community-built zkEVM Scroll launching in weeks

September 18, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Scroll co-founder Ye Zhang is aiming for a community-driven decentralized immutable scaling solution for Ethereum.

After two years of development, a group of Ethereum idealists are close to launching their zero-knowledge EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) — Scroll — developed with Ethereum’s values in mind.

While there are already several zero-knowledge EVMs in existence today, Scroll co-founder Ye Zhang told Cointelegraph at Token2049 that the project was “idealistic” as the team was sticking to the philosophy and the principles that Ethereum already cultivates.

Zhang said that they have been working on this mostly as a “labor of love,” driven by a shared vision to scale Ethereum while staying true to its decentralization principles.

He added that the project was more human interest than simply solving computational problems, “we started in an open source way, in a community-driven way,” he said.

“We can grow this community very organically, and then grow our network effect, not in a very silly way, not in a very marketing-driven aggressive way.”

The new zkEVM is set to launch within weeks, having already undergone extensive testing and carried out audits on the code. Zhang said the Scroll will launch after some final testing and major projects like Uniswap and Aave are ready to deploy on Scroll at launch.

Scroll co-founder Ye Zhang. Source: Cointelegraph

The mathematician believes zk-rollups are the “holy grail” or best-in-class layer-2 scaling solutions, which are also very cheap and secure.

However, Scroll is entering a crowded ecosystem that already has zkEVM solutions from Polygon, Immutable, StarkWare, and ConsenSys’ Linea which launched in August.

Zhang claimed that some of the other systems such as Linea have some “unproven” parts in the circuit but believes Scroll provides a “complete proof” of all Ethereum “opcodes” and components of the transaction.

“So it's not only compared to compatibility, but also a full proof for proving that everything we already have,” he said.

Scroll is a layer-2 scaling project that has been in development for two years. It uses zero-knowledge proofs to compress data off-chain, meaning only proofs are submitted on-chain — enabling higher throughput.

As always, we published another ecosystem update, highlighting some of the latest projects to join the Scroll ecosystem

This week, we cover DeFi aggregators and permissionless lending protocols. https://t.co/1G4ErzAB00
— Scroll (@Scroll_ZKP) September 16, 2023

The EVM component enables full native compatibility with any existing Ethereum software and applications.

The initial setup will still involve some centralization such as sequencers, Zhang said, but the roadmap will decentralize this further over time.

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Immutable zkEVM begins testnet phase with 12 Web3 games in development

August 15, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The Web3 gaming company announced that its fully Ethereum-compatible network is now available for public testing.

Web3 gaming platform Immutable has commenced public testing of its Immutable zkEVM in collaboration with Polygon Labs.

Work on the zero-knowledge Ethereum virtual machine (zkEVM) network began in March after Immutable announced a partnership with Polygon Labs. Polygon's own 'holy grail' Ethereum-scaling zkEVM hit mainnet on March 27.

In an Aug. 14 announcement, Immutable said its zkEVM will give game developers access to lower development costs, and the security and network effects that come with the Ethereum ecosystem. In March, Immutable co-founder and president Robbie Ferguson said the zkEVM is aimed at increasing ownership rights for Web3 gamers.

*Immutable zkEVM developer documents. Source: Immutable.*

Over 20 gaming companies have partnered with Immutable to support the launch, including GameStop, TokenTrove marketplace, Web-based game distributor Kongregate, game designer iLogos, and others, according to Immutable.

At least 12 games have already started building their Web3 titles on zkEVM, it added. These include CoinArcade, Galaxy Commanders, Medieval Empires, MetalCore, Meta Toy, DragonZ SAGA, Rune Realms, Shardbound, Infinite Victory, EF Defense, and SimWin Football. MetalCore in particular has announced a beta launch date of September 15 on Immutable zkEVM.

Immutable zkEVM testnet will use zero-knowledge proofs to secure transfers between itself and Sepolia Ethereum, allowing developers to test out how the mainnet version will work once it launches.

The network is fully compatible with Ethereum applications, meaning that developers can port Ethereum projects over to it with minimal changes, Immutable stated. The team will also be deploying an “Immutable Relayer for currency abstraction and gas sponsorship” soon, which will allow developers to create gas-less wallet accounts.

Immutable chief technology officer and co-founder Alex Connolly expressed his view that the new network will be “irresistible” to developers, stating:

“This chain, combined with our suite of platform products, is the first end-to-end EVM solution dedicated exclusively to making games successful. We’re already seeing a massive influx from games, players and partners that will make the Immutable ecosystem irresistible for the next generation of web3 games."

Immutable is the developer of the Gods Unchained Web3 trading card game, which was originally launched on Ethereum. In April 2021, the company launched its first zero-knowledge-based layer 2 network Immutable X in an attempt to lower transaction fees for players of its games.

However, that network is not fully compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM), the computation engine that Ethereum uses. For this reason, users of Immutable X must create derivative keys through a web interface in order to use the network. By contrast, users should now be able to simply switch networks within their wallets to access Immutable zkEVM.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has recently weighed in on the benefits and disadvantages of zkEVMs, saying that they may cause data inefficiency and latency issues but may also greatly improve the scalability of Ethereum.

Healthy competition welcome — Polygon zkEVM lead

July 18, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Prominent Ethereum development firms have rolled out varying zero-knowledge scaling solutions that drive healthy competition in the ecosystem.

An environment of healthy competition is being fostered between the Ethereum ecosystem’s top development firms building zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVMs) to scale the network, according to one of Polygon’s co-founders.

Jordi Baylina, technical lead of Polygon Hermez zkEVM, spoke to Cointelegraph ahead of the start of EthCC in France. With builders from across the Ethereum ecosystem converging on Paris, zero-knowledge proof (ZK-proof) scaling tools are set to be a major focal point.

Polygon’s zkEVM uses ZK-proofs to reduce transaction costs and increase the throughput of the Ethereum network, while taking advantage of the security and finality of the layer-1 blockchain.

ZK-proofs have proved to be an important scaling tool for the Ethereum ecosystem. The technology allows protocols like Polygon’s zkEVM to handle transaction computations off-chain before providing a resource-lite proof to the Ethereum mainnet without revealing any of the associated data.

Baylina, who is at the helm of Polygon’s zkEVM, says the breadth of development being done with ZK technology has been hugely beneficial to the wider Ethereum ecosystem:

“Having different projects adds a lot of experience, and it’s also a way to test different approaches, ways of handling things or solving things.”

Baylina added that various projects emulate good advances and try to make them better, while failings act as a learning for all ZK-based projects in the space.

*Polygon zkEVM unique addresses. Source: Polygon zkEVM*

Polygon zkEVM is live on mainnet, and the network is closing in on 250,000 unique active addresses. Its daily active Polygon zkEVM addresses are also trending upward, with both metrics suggesting that user adoption is growing.

Meanwhile, Baylina highlighted the number of applications that are building on Polygon zkEVM as the most important metric for his team. This, in turn, leads to a wealth of information and feedback from developers, which is shaping changes to the protocol:

“Hearing from developers the issues that they have, if they notice something that can be improved or the quality of the tooling that they have on top of that for me, these are the real metrics we are working hard on.”

Baylina provided a working example where developers had identified issues with timestamps that were critical for the operation of decentralized finance oracles. Bayina’s team found a workaround solution while a long-term fix was being developed. Nevertheless, the input from builders is helping improve the protocol as more join the ecosystem.

“Important projects are coming to the network, and we are getting a lot of experience and knowledge on the needs of different applications.”

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal previously told Cointelegraph that Polygon’s zkEVM is the “holy grail of Ethereum scaling,” allowing the protocol to submit proofs to the Ethereum mainnet without the layer-1 blockchain having to rerun computations.

The technology is envisioned to drastically scale Ethereum, allowing developers to build decentralized applications while being unencumbered by the base blockchain’s network performance.

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ConsenSys launches Linea zkEVM to further scale Ethereum

July 11, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Blockchain

ConsenSys rolls scaling network Linea, which delivered faster throughput and 15 times lower transaction costs than Ethereum’s layer 1.

The Ethereum ecosystem welcomes another layer-2 scaling solution as ConsenSys begins onboarding partners to its Linea network, which has produced significant scaling milestones in testing.

Linea is an Ethereum layer-2 scaling network that allows developers to build or migrate decentralized applications for Ethereum. It operates using zero-knowledge proofs and is Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) equivalent, meaning its applications can seamlessly interact with the Ethereum blockchain.

The network went through a lengthy testnet period which saw some 5.5 million unique wallets carry out over 46 million transactions. ConsenSys outlined improvements to Linea’s performance, transaction costs and user experience through its testing period.

The gradual alpha release began on July 11 with more than 100 partners and ConsenSys touts faster throughput and 15 times lower transaction fees than those executed on Ethereum’s mainnet.

Linea also integrates with ConsenSys’ Ethereum browser wallet MetaMask, giving Linea users access to its token bridge, swap and buy functionality.

ConsenSys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin highlighted the number of layer 2 Ethereum scaling protocols and solutions as a key component driving the development of Web3 applications and functionality:

“With the Merge to Proof of Stake and the broad traction of the rollup-centric roadmap, Ethereum L2s are set to play a crucial role in making great advances in scalability and usability.”

The announcement shared with Cointelegraph highlights decentralized finance (DeFi) applications migrating to Linea to tap into fast finality, capital efficient bridge and inherited security from Ethereum’s mainnet.

Meanwhile the network also offers lower gas fees, high throughput and low latency, which are key components needed to power nonfungible tokens, blockchain gaming and social applications.

ConsenSys also launched its Linea Ecosystem Investment Alliance (EIA), which will see more than 30 venture capital firms lend capital and advisory assistance to ecosystem builders.

The launch of Linea’s alpha mainnet will make use of safeguards to protect users, DApps and the network itself. This includes only allowing launch partners the execute calls to the network over the first week.

ConsenSys intends to open up the network during ETHCC in France from July 17, while some limits on withdrawals may be instituted over the first 90 days. The firm will carry out a bug bounty and monitor system performance before fully opening LIna to end users.

Ethereum layer 2's have been a major talking point in 2023. Layer 2 development firm Polygon also tooks its zkEVM network public in March 2023. Meanwhile Starknet, whose founder Eli Ben-Sasson pioneered zk-proofs, has focused on increasing throughput of its network this year.

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Account abstraction will drive a billion users from Asia to Web3: ConsenSys exec

July 5, 2023 Coin Telegraph

account abstraction

In addition to “smart accounts” Ethereum adoption will be boosted by Web3 gaming along with zkEVM scaling and security, says Laura Shi.

Account abstraction, also known as “smart accounts” could eventually onboard a billion users from the Asia region to Web3, according to an executive at Ethereum software solutions provider ConsenSys.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, the director of strategic initiatives at ConsenSys, Laura Shi, noted that the Ethereum and Web3 ecosystem has seen a strong expansion in Asia this year.

“More dApps are improving UX for the Asian market, including introducing Asian language support,” she said.

Shi added this expansion is primarily being driven by the introduction of zero knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) rollups and the mass adoption of Optimistic rollups.

The two rollups are layer-2 scaling solutions with zkEVM offering developers security, scaling and direct compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts.

Shi believes the development of account abstraction, which offers greater programmable functionality and more “bank-like” features than a regular crypto wallet, would increase adoption in the region.

“The development of account abstraction will facilitate the onboarding of billion-level users in APAC to Web3”

Account abstraction was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and other developers in EIP-4337 to “completely avoid consensus-layer protocol changes, instead relying on higher-layer infrastructure,” in September 2021. However, the concept goes much further back in Ethereum’s timeline.

According to the 2022 Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Index, the top two crypto-adopting countries in the world were in Asia — Vietnam and the Philippines. Thailand, China and India were in the top 10 despite anti-crypto sentiments from their respective governments.

Shi believes mass adoption in Asia is also being driven by social gaming and Web3 gaming, citing South Korea and China as examples.

“South Korea's gaming publishers are continuously focusing on Web3 RPG game publishing, attempting to optimize the sustainability of the on-chain economic model,” said Shi.

“Meanwhile, the Chinese-speaking developer ecosystem is focusing on onboarding Web2 users to Web3 gaming through adopting account abstraction solutions.”

Both use cases will rely heavily on zkEVM roll ups and account abstraction development, she added.

“From the use-case perspective, we see Web3 social and gaming content has the largest potential in the coming years. It is powered by [a] zkEVM rollup solution and [an] account abstraction solution that enables gas fee subsidy and social recovery.”

Asked whether the current U.S. industry crackdown could be driving Ethereum and Web3 ecosystem growth in Asia, Shi said she didn’t see any correlation.

“So far we have not observed any direct correlation between these and the regulatory dynamics in the United States.”

The pivot to Asia has been a hot topic recently as U.S. crypto and Web3 companies seek friendlier jurisdictions in the Far East.

However, the Ethereum ecosystem in Asia appears to be doing fine on its own without the catalyst of Uncle Sam’s war on crypto.

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