Application and Prospects of ZK-Rollup Technology, the New Darling of the Encrypted World
ZK-Rollup Technology: Future of Cryptography
What makes ZK-Rollup technology such a hot topic in the world of cryptocurrencies? Highly secured privacy and safety, and powerful scalability, can ZK-Rollup technology stand out from the market competition? In facing the future of Web3, developers may need to maintain a dialectical thinking about ZK-Rollup technology to grasp opportunities and explore the potential of on-chain application development. If you are interested in ZK-Rollup technology, you may want to listen to the experience and insights of the guests in this issue of TinTinWeekly on ZK-Rollup technology.
Exciting viewpoints
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Reasons for choosing ZK-Rollup technology: To easily achieve the goal of permission fairness and decentralization.
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ZK-Rollup technology’s strong scalability and exit mechanism make it a darling of the crypto world.
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The Starknet Chinese community is attracting more developers to learn about ZK through popular science information and educational activities.
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How can developers seize the ZK technology dividend? Learn technical documents, try to write code, and leverage the on-chain combinability function.
Why choose ZK-Rollup? Security, fairness, and decentralization.
Developers familiar with zero-knowledge proofs should know that the biggest advantage of ZK technology is security and privacy. In addition, ZK era and Starknet natively supported account abstraction, bringing a new experience to Web3 users. “What we can expect is that native support for account abstraction on ZK era and Starknet is a necessary path for Web3 user volume to reach a higher level,” Aaron confidently said. Using account abstraction, we can resolve the dilemma of high fees and long cycles in traditional transaction processes, and enhance account privacy and security with ZK technology, achieving the goal of permission fairness and decentralization, which is a positive signal for user experience. “Blockchain and smart contracts themselves achieve account abstraction at the underlying level based on the principles of fairness and transparency . Whoever can develop excellent wallet applications faster will gain more advantages in the user market.”
However, while ZK-Rollup technology presents new opportunities for developers, it also comes with various challenges. “There are many challenges in ZK technology itself due to its immaturity, such as situations where false evidence is made due to immature code,” summarized Professor Icer. Specifically, the first challenge is contract restrictions, where only a few specific pieces of information are aggregated in user transfer records; the second challenge is support for complex logic, where current attempts and performance improvements to support ZK EVM technology are still unsatisfactory. “Faced with the impossible triangle of blockchain – security, scalability, and decentralization, ZK-Rollup inherits the security of the main chain, but does not fully guarantee decentralization”; the third challenge is comprehensive risks, where many platforms supported by ZK-Rollup expose technical shortcomings in contract upgrades, exit mechanisms, and other areas, which is worth vigilance. For the long-term development in the future, ZK-Rollup technology still needs developers to have a “tendency to benefit and avoid harm” consciousness, in order to truly play to their strengths and avoid weaknesses.
ZK-Rollup technology and other expansion solutions complement each other
Technology and ecology benefit from each other
Just as ZK-Rollup technology is gradually becoming popular, the relationship between ZK-Rollup and Ethereum and other Layer1 blockchain expansion solutions has begun to be discussed among developers. Many developers believe that they are in a competitive relationship, which is not conducive to subsequent collaborative development. Leo disagrees and thinks that this competitive relationship can also be seen as a “complementary” relationship, where both the ecology and technology have their own strengths, “for example, Starknet helps Ethereum to better implement capacity expansion with ZK technology or solutions to improve performance.”
Encourage developers to continue to explore
In addition, Ethereum’s infrastructure has the potential for more innovative exploration, such as developing Layer2 applications, which can also promote the joint development of future markets. In the face of such a seemingly competitive technical ecology, developers’ continuous exploration on different Layer2 or public chains is also a “complementarity”. We should strive to give full play to our technical advantages in order to win in market competition.
Building a Technical Collaboration Plan
Despite the fierce competition in the technology market, developers who choose ZK-Rollup technology are not on the wrong path. At present, ZK-Rollup technology has become a “sweet cake” in the encrypted world. The most important reason is that it improves scalability and has strong expansion capabilities without compromising the security of the main chain. In addition, ZK-Rollup has sufficient security performance guarantees. Once a fault or shutdown occurs, as long as there is a sound exit mechanism, users may be able to withdraw their funds. With its flexible and adaptable technical processing capabilities, ZK-Rollup will also explore a unique collaborative development plan and achieve “complementary” development with more technology systems.
ZK-Rollup Application Pioneer – Innovative Experiment of Starknet
In order to move better towards the encrypted world, Starknet has achieved impressive results with ZK technology. Unlike previous ZK technologies, Starknet uses ZK VM, which “although sacrifices some operational efficiency, it can improve ZK performance, reduce usage costs, and fully meet expansion requirements,” said Leo. In addition, Starknet customizes the developer language-Cairo, which is used to support native account abstraction and is committed to creating a convenient and easy-to-use contract wallet.
Starknet can achieve faster and more complex calculations on the chain, which is in line with the development needs of full-chain games. Many full-potential full-chain games and derivative games can be developed on Starknet. At the same time, Starknet also promotes the entry of “dynamic NFTs” into full-chain game projects to realize various game ideas.
The developing Starknet Chinese community is also “absorbing more Web3 developers to join the technical ecosystem.” Leo said: “At present, the Starknet Chinese community is mainly doing two things. One is technical science popularization, which revolves around daily information updates on Twitter and translates technical science popularization content; the other is developer education, helping developers who develop in the Crypto field to smoothly enter the Starknet ecology. In the future, Starknet will also hold educational training and hackathon competitions from time to time.” I believe that Starknet, which gathers more developer power, will develop stunning products.
Seizing investment opportunities in ZK technology, developers still need to improve their technical skills
As a venture capitalist, Yuxing and Jiucailao also see the investment opportunities behind ZK-Rollup technology. “I am very concerned about the technological innovation of ZK-Rollup itself. For example, the entire chain game is an industry direction worth investing in under the ZK-Rollup technology system ; in addition, the combination of ZKML and artificial intelligence technology is also a potential development track for the future,” Yuxing said. Compared with specific investment tracks, Jiucailao suggested that everyone should take a more macro view of ZK-Rollup technology. He pointed out that we need to solve the development problems faced by ZK-Rollup from the aspects of technology and ecology . Only by cultivating more developers, establishing a healthy community ecology, designing high-performance technical tools, can we help ZK-Rollup incubate more investment-worthy projects. When we find a new technical narrative, we must also see the current development status of the ecosystem, which is the most important proposition.
“In the face of investment and development opportunities in the ZK field, we still need to see if there will be a leading DApp in the future.” Undeniably, as the foundation of the chain, the construction of ZK-Rollup in transactions, lending, stablecoins, etc. is still in the early stage , and Jiucailao looks forward to the emergence of new projects in the ZKML track in the future.
For developers, in addition to seizing the investment direction of ZK-Rollup technology, they need to improve their development skills to seize development opportunities. The guest teachers on the scene suggested that developers interested in ZK-Rollup should further focus on targeted learning of technical documents (understand the basic principles and algorithm logic of ZK technology); players with development experience can try to write ZK-Rollup technical code to improve their technical skills and have a broader vision. On this basis, developers should fully leverage the technical advantages of blockchain originality and composability, and constantly innovate and explore the possibility of technology coupling , so that ZK-Rollup can also shine in the future of Web3!
