Matter Labs has launched a testnet for the second iteration of its zkSync scaling solution, which has taken another step towards solving the Ethereum blockchain trilemma.
In a June 1 announcement, Matter Labs revealed that the alpha version of zkEVM testnet had gone live. The platform provides full Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible smart contract deployment in a Layer 2 environment.
zkSync speeds up Layer 1 Ethereum transactions by using zero knowledge rollups to batch transactions and process them off the root chain. It can also provide security guarantees comparable to a normal smart contract on Layer 1.
Solving the trilemma
zkSync 2.0 and its zero-knowledge EVM testnet aims to make progress with the scaling blockchain trilemma of security, scalability, and decentralization. Traditionally, one has to be sacrificed in order to improve the others.
“All current scaling solutions reside on a spectrum of sacrificing some security, decentralization, and programmability for scalability.”
Matter Labs stated that when developing on Ethereum, there is a fourth element to the equation, which is programmability. The design of zkSync 2.0 maximizes all four features with the two technological breakthroughs, it added.
The zkEVM engine will power the zkRollup, which is the current solution for maintaining Layer 1 security and solidity smart contract support. An additional protocol called zkPorter, which was unveiled in April will provide an off-chain data availability system to turbocharge the existing rollups.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spoke about the importance of the scaling trilemma in a recent blog post responding to fundamentally flawed comments Elon Musk made about Dogecoin’s superiority.
Endgame in Ethereum scaling
The two are interoperable and composable, enabling zkSync 2.0 to significantly outperform all other scaling solutions, it added. When sharding is launched with ETH 2.0 next year it will provide an exponentially larger data availability layer without sacrificing decentralization.
“zkSync’s zkRollup technology combined with Eth2 data sharding is the endgame, hitting 100,000+ TPS without sacrifices on any of the 4 factors.”
It used Uniswap as an example explaining that the DEX can be deployed on the zkRollup side to swap for the lowest fees by zkPorter accounts.
Matter Labs added that once the testnet is complete, it will focus on making its Zinc programming language more expressive and feature-rich. Following that it will build the Rust programming language compiler frontend to allow smart contract coding using native Rust.
In late March, the Asian decentralized crypto wallet provider imToken announced a partnership with Matter Labs to develop scaling solutions.
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