zkSync 2.0 Roadmap Update: zkEVM Testnet in May, Mainnet in August
Bonus: NFTs and swaps on zkSync 1.x mainnet in May.
After a year of exhaustive self-isolation (and having taken many precautions), we were delighted to finally get the team together for a week in largely COVID-safe Dubai.
While the team had a little well-deserved fun, we spent the bulk of our time in discussions, workshops, and brainstorming, to polish the final aspects of the zkSync 2.0 design. The outcome of this intense week is our updated development roadmap. Today, we’re excited to share these plans with you.
zkSync 2.0: What to expect
EVM-based programming model and composability
The design of zkSync 2.0 from users’ and developers’ perspectives practically does not differ from EVM:
- users can keep their existing Ethereum addresses;
- every account has state;
- contracts can call each other with atomic transactions;
and so on.
Portability of existing Solidity source code
We made great progress in the implementation of the new Turing-complete ZincVM. In addition to the existing Zinc programming language, it is now possible to compile anything capable of producing an intermediate representation in Yul (hello, Solidity!).
It’s worth noting that ZincVM is based on LLVM, so we’re taking advantage of optimizations and tooling that exists for it. In the future, it will also allow us to easily support other programming languages, such as native Rust.
We expect most of the Solidity contracts to compile either without modifications or with only minimal changes.
Native support of all Ethereum wallets
zkSync 2.0 will natively support Ethereum’s ECDSA signature scheme (thanks to an efficient circuit implementation based on PLONK’s lookup tables). This means all Ethereum wallets will be usable out-of-box, with no signing keys in browsers and special integration efforts required.
20,000+ TPS — scalability beyond zkRollup
This is something we are extremely excited about! The NFT boom is hinting at the mainstream adoption around the corner. Unfortunately, onboarding millions of new mainstream users is a challenge that rollups (no matter ZK or optimistic) simply can’t handle alone, due to the inherent limits imposed by on-chain data availability.
Acknowledging this, zkSync 2.0 will introduce a new holistic architecture that offers a mix of zkRollup and zkPorter accounts (freely choosable by users and fully interoperable):
- zkRollup: inheriting ultra-secure properties of mainnet at ~1/100th of the L1 costs.
- zkPorter: minuscule tx costs (fixed at ~$0.01), yet cryptographically and crypto-economically protected — with a better safety profile than optimistic rollups.
We will share more in a separate post.
zkSync 2.0: Timeline
- Public testnet: May 2021.
- Documentation: will be made publicly available together with the testnet.
- Mainnet: targeting August 2021.
zkSync 1.x Update: NFTs and swaps on mainnet this Spring
We perfectly understand that many projects cannot wait until Summer. This is why a part of our team keeps working on battle-tested zkSync 1.x, to support more use-cases earlier.
For payments, zkSync 1.x is a clear winner today of all the existing rollups — both in terms of price and UX. 82% of all contributions in the recent Gitcoin Grants Round 9 were made via zkSync.
More wallets are announcing first-class support of zkSync, including Argent and imToken. We also continue work on integrating exchanges for direct L2 on-/off-ramp experience bypassing L1.
Trading of fungible tokens (via atomic swaps / limit orders) will be available directly in L2 in April, facilitated by liquidity providers — we are working with liquidity providers on this. Early on, we decided against implementing an AMM functionality directly in zkSync: this will be easily possible in v2.0 (see Curve on our closed testnet), and we fundamentally don’t ever want to compete with projects seeking to adopt zkSync. On the other hand, trading via atomic swaps can be offered by anyone, and will greatly extend the functionality for the existing zkSync 1.x users.
The most interesting update is that zkSync 1.x will soon support native minting, transfers, and atomic swaps of NFTs with full security guarantees of a zkRollup! NFTs should go live on mainnet in May.
We are accepting a limited number of partners to offer early access to the NFT and swaps / limit orders functionality — please, reach out.
Don’t miss an important update
To keep you up-to-date (including key developer updates), please subscribe for our newsletter here.
You can also follow our news on Twitter.
Help us scale Ethereum trustlessly!
If our mission and values resonate with you, please check out our open positions — we are always looking for great people to join the team!
The three most wanted roles for us are: