Bangkok Devcon: The ZK world is exploding

Original author: Haotian (X: @tme l0 211 )

In the past two days, I participated in the Proof Summit jointly organized by @eigenlayer altlayer, Provable hosted by @RiscZero, ZKHub initiated by @ProjectZKM and @GOATRollup, and ZK Accelerate, etc. There are many activities, and it is impossible to participate in them all. But I went to the ZK field and after running around, I felt that I was poisoned by ZK and was very addicted.

Dreaming back to the ICO moment: Onchain anything ——>Prove anything

I remember that during the ICO in 2017, there was a prosperous scene of all industries can be put on the chain, such as: medical case data on the chain, agricultural products from planting to the table traceability chain, supply chain upstream and downstream transaction financing on the chain, etc. Although, it was later proved that not all scenarios can be put on the chain, and not all need to be put on the chain. However, the narrative paradigm of Onchain anything has made the bull market prosperous in 2017.

I had a similar feeling after attending these major ZK special events. ZK is launching a grand narrative of Prove anything.

The real value of ZK lies in the separation of off-chain computing and on-chain verification. Only by allowing off-chain computing to exert its ultimate computing performance can the on-chain storage and execution costs be minimized. ZK Tech serves as a trusted bridge to connect everything.

Looking back at the past two cycles, the trend has been to tell the story of on-chain. Rollup layer 2 is just the tip of the iceberg of ZKs value. After the outbreak of ZK, there will be no boundary between on-chain and off-chain, and there will only be a new paradigm of verifiable computing.

At the same time, Prove Anythings innovative exploration is also quietly igniting. Verifiable computing games, identity authentication, DeFi/RWA, privacy transactions, voting governance, AI model verification, trusted proof of IoT devices, enterprise-level supply chain privacy assurance, and other application scenarios involving both off-chain and on-chain will all be covered.

AVS economic consensus system is important to ZK

At the Proof Summit, we saw many new projects, such as: @alt_layer wants to create a VITAL ZK proof system to provide ZK proof capabilities for OP-Rollup; @alignedlayer focuses on large-scale ZK proof generation and explores effective integration with OP Stack; @OpacityNetwork explores data privacy and secure shared infra based on VDN, zkTLS, MPC, etc.; @lagrangedevProver Network wants to establish a dedicated proof service layer between L1 and L2 to provide a unified shared proof infrastructure for different ZK proofs.

I have previously analyzed that Eigenlayer and its AVS service paradigm represent the future of Ethereum, if it was just a prospect at that time. At this conference, I was verified that the improvements that altlayer wants to make for OP Fraud Proof must be based on AVS, and the unified proof service layer consensus that Lagrange wants to make must rely on AVS.

The secure consensus that can be commercially packaged and output by AVS will help ZK quickly build a number of middleware protocol service networks, and help a series of rapidly emerging ZK infrastructures and existing pure chain VM environments to achieve connectivity.

Needless to say, everyone can feel that there are too many emerging ZK forces active upstream and downstream of the AVS active verification service system initiated by Eigenlayer. Although it seems to be in its early stages, lets wait and see.

TEE verifiable execution environment adds wings to ZK

This TEE Salon lasted a whole day and I didn’t have time to listen to it all, but surprisingly, the event was held at Google’s cool office in Bangkok. Out of a spiritual pilgrimage to the world’s largest Internet company, I was quite excited to attend this event.

Googles Confidential Computing cloud computing product line, Intels SGX and TDX technologies, etc. are eager to find a suitable entry point in the new TEE narrative. The logic is simple. Just look at the ambiguous relationship between Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, and Tencent Cloud and blockchain.

In my opinion, ZK+TEE is the left and right guardian of the era of verifiable computing. ZK is responsible for computing proof and verifying information transmission, while TEE provides a trusted execution environment and data privacy.

For example, Aztecs dark pool, Fabrics VPU hardware innovation chip, etc. More and more projects integrate ZK and TEE as well as other MPC and FHE encryption algorithms to accelerate the arrival of a new verifiable computing paradigm. Although TEE still feels too traditional, it will definitely help ZK as it becomes more popular.

zkVM provides a large infrastructure for the popularization of ZK Tech

At the zkHUB special event, I was dazzled by the overwhelming number of ZK projects such as ZKM, RiscZERO, Cysic, Mina, Goat Network, Succinct, etc. I don’t mean “too many”, but the coverage and depth of its upstream and downstream solutions are amazing.

Many people may have seen some of the innovations that Risc-V virtual machines are making from @VitalikButerin’s article. Here I saw engineers from @ProjectZKM systematically explaining zkMIPS, a general-purpose zkVM that simplifies the ZK development process. It reduces the time and complexity of developing custom ZK circuits and provides a standardized platform for ZK application development.

Different from Risc-Vs processor architecture that is more hardware-oriented, zkMIPSs streamlined instruction subset that is more software-oriented can greatly optimize the scenarios required to generate zero-knowledge proofs.

zkVM is very popular in the context of modular narrative. Many people know that zkVM is more promising than zkEVM. Its core logic lies in the fact that the future ZK will definitely break away from the original pure chain connection paradigm.

Therefore, zkVM is really important because it can connect all AltVMs, make Ethereum, Bitcoin, etc. a unified settlement layer for the entire chain environment, and build a unified liquidity layer that transcends technical architecture restrictions.

I believe that at the end of the EVM-Compatible narrative, the new zkVM will release a large infrastructure of verifiable computing that connects everything and will be a continuous hot topic for many years to come.

above.

Finally, let me end with a sentence from RiscZERO VP. He said that the blockchain we are in is entering a new Cloud Era from the Server Era represented by Ethereum and Solana.

Put this sentence into the current blockchain development environment where modularization, chain abstraction, zkVM and other aspects are being dismantled and reconstructed, and you will definitely understand what is being promoted and advocated behind this sentence.

This article is sourced from the internet: Bangkok Devcon: The ZK world is exploding

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