Revealing the new future of ZK-Rollup: Taiko—a pioneering way to challenge zkEVM

Ethereum is the product of remarkable advances in mechanisms that facilitate human collaboration and individual autonomy. As a globally recognized settlement network, Ethereum fundamentally changes the concept of digital ownership and data immutability. Its permissionless nature enables global individuals to freely and unfettered seamless transfers across time zones and regions.

The main strength of the system is its dedication to decentralization and security, prioritizing these factors over speed and scalability. However, when a public blockchain lacks scalability, high transaction fees and limited throughput hinder the ability of developers, users, and applications to fully utilize the network. This scalability limitation ultimately limits the potential of Ethereum as a whole.

In order to reach its full potential, Ethereum must overcome limitations in scalability to become a network capable of supporting a vast ecosystem of dApps. To achieve this goal, Ethereum is actively researching Rollups as a highly optimized scaling solution, focusing in particular on the Ethereum equivalent of ZK-rollups as the most viable option for developers.

If you’ve followed the latest developments in the zero-knowledge space on Ethereum, you’re probably familiar with notable projects such as Polygon, Starkware, Scroll, and zkSync. However, there is an emerging, relatively low-key but equally promising competitor that is rapidly emerging. Taiko is one such Zero-Knowledge Extended Virtual Machine (zkEVM) project that aims to be a fully decentralized Ethereum equivalent of ZK-rollup and is working hard to establish itself in the field.

Let’s explore the essence of Taiko and gain insight into its unique characteristics.

Taiko Brief

Taiko, whose name comes from the Japanese word for “drum”, was founded in early 2022 by Daniel Wang (CEO) and Brecht Devos (CTO), both seasoned veterans in the field. Daniel and Brecht previously worked together on Loopring, an application-specific ZK-rollup first deployed on Ethereum in 2018. After leaving Loopring in 2021, Daniel originally planned to build a decentralized social network, but soon realized that the existing infrastructure could not support such an application. Daniel and Brecht join Taiko with their Loopring experience, and with a team of over 20 exceptional blockchain developers, ZK researchers and crypto-native operators in over 16 countries, their goal It is to jointly build a truly decentralized Ethereum equivalent ZK-rollup.

Unlike its competitors, Taiko is a general purpose ZK-rollup project that aims to build a Type-1 zkEVM that provides a seamless experience for developers.

But what is Type-1 ZK-rollup, and why is it important?

Type-1 zkEVM

In Vitalik Buterin’s classification of ZK-rollups, Type-1 ZK-rollups prioritize compatibility with the EVM over fast proof generation. This means that Type-1 ZK-rollup does not make any changes to the existing Ethereum system, and uses the same hash function, state tree, transaction tree, pre-compilation, and consensus logic adopted by Ethereum. Because of this feature, Type-1 ZK-rollup can be considered equivalent to EVM, hence the name zkEVM.

Pictures from Taiko

The advantage of Type-1 zkEVM is its ability to take full advantage of Ethereum’s established development tools and infrastructure, including clients. While Type-2/2.5 zkEVM is also considered compatible with EVM, they will change some parts of the Ethereum stack, which may have adverse effects on gas fees or Keccak hash functions. Depending on the type of project, these changes may negatively affect security mechanisms or the efficiency of smart contracts. Therefore, Type-1 zkEVM may be more suitable for projects that are sensitive to gas fee changes or require the security of the battle-proven Keccak hash function.

However, the EVM itself is not specifically designed to perform ZK-friendly operations, which results in a large amount of computation to generate zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). Currently, generating a single ZKP for an Ethereum block can take hours, but there is potential for improvement through the parallel operation of proof generators (the entities responsible for creating ZKPs) and the long-term development of hardware-accelerated solutions like ASICs.

Technical Overview

Taiko aims to be a Type-1 zkEVM specifically designed to seamlessly execute Ethereum smart contract code without any modifications. This will enable developers to easily transition existing applications to Layer 2 without implementing new code.

Taiko consists of three main components:

1. **zkEVM: **zkEVM verifies the correctness of EVM calculation through validity proof. Taiko can run the EVM directly without any modification. It is extremely beneficial for developers to leverage battle-proven code from the Ethereum network and keep it pristine with existing development tools. Developers can easily migrate existing Solidity contracts to Taiko without compiling them into a different language or adjusting the framework. Additionally, Taiko-client is built on top of Geth, ensuring compatibility with future Ethereum protocol upgrades.
2. **Layer 2 rollup node: **Taiko node is responsible for collecting and executing user transactions on the L2 chain. These nodes oversee the management and state progress of the rollup chain.
3. **Taiko protocol: **Taiko protocol defines and executes rollup rules and identifies potential participants. Smart contracts deployed on Ethereum Layer 1 act as a data availability mechanism and verify ZKP.

These components work together to ensure smooth compatibility with Ethereum Layer 1, providing developers and users with a familiar experience.

Decentralization

In addition to prioritizing EVM compatibility, Taiko also places great emphasis on decentralization. Many rollup networks initially prioritize performance and gradually introduce decentralization, but Taiko intends to start with a decentralized proposer (serializer) responsible for block submissions and a decentralized prover for ZKP generation. This approach highlights Taiko’s strong commitment to decentralization, as no other rollup network currently uses a decentralized serializer.

Taiko’s focus on decentralization ensures a solid foundation for dApps while remaining true to Ethereum’s core values. The team also revealed their plans to launch a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), with more details to be discussed in the future.

Status of Taiko

On June 7, 2023, Taiko achieved a major milestone in its pursuit of a decentralized and Ethereum-equivalent zkEVM by launching an alpha-3 testnet called Grímsvöt. The testnet plays a key role in comprehensively testing network design and components, with the main goal of decentralizing proposers and provers while developing support for Layer 3 technologies. As outlined in Taiko’s development roadmap, the team has arranged for multiple testnets, each focused on testing specific components of the technology stack, in preparation for the mainnet launch in Q1 2024.

Pictures from Taiko

Additionally, Taiko Labs announced the successful completion of a $22 million funding round. Sequoia China led a $10 million seed round in Q3 2022, while Generative Ventures led a recently closed $12 million Series A round. Other investors in both funding rounds include IOSG Ventures, GSR, and GGV Capital, as well as several angel investors from the Ethereum community. The funds will be used to set up an ecosystem investment fund to attract dApps and developers to the ecosystem.

Summarize

There is no doubt that Type-1 zkEVM provides the smoothest experience for those developers who are familiar with Ethereum, so for them, building applications on the Layer 2 network has the least friction. In the short term, Taiko undoubtedly has an advantage in providing developers with the easiest way to migrate their applications to Rollup. However, this compatibility comes at the cost of efficiency, and as developers become more familiar with ZK-rollups, they may be more inclined to build applications on top of the higher-performing Type-3 and Type-4 ZK-rollups. However, this may not happen anytime soon, as most developers still prefer to develop on EVM-compatible chains, and in the blockchain industry, where speed is of the essence, many developers prefer to stay on their own. Familiar territory, focus on other aspects of the application, and put the migration to rollups on the back burner for now.

Taiko** is still working hard towards an ambitious goal and stands out as a unique project aimed at achieving exceptional results. With the ongoing alpha testnet, Taiko has made significant progress towards becoming an accessible and user-friendly platform for both Ethereum developers and users. It upholds the core values of Ethereum, while providing scalability and high efficiency, which will have an important impact on the future of Ethereum. The project is expected to foster wider adoption, foster a thriving ecosystem, and play a key role in shaping the trajectory of Ethereum. **