ConsenSys announced the upcoming release of the Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) rollup to the public testnet on March 28th., Enables stress testing of layer 2 scaling technologies.
The ConsenSys R&D team has been working on the zkEVM rollup for the last four years. zkEVM is touted to provide fast finality, high throughput, and security of payments on the Ethereum blockchain.
Launched in the fourth quarter of 2022, the private beta provided early access to a limited number of users, processed over 350,000 transactions, and onboarded various decentralized applications (DApps). The testnet allowed a Solidity developer to build, test and launch DApps while testing his zkEVM at scale.
zkEVM onboarding is on track and activity is at peak levels
Successfully executed a total of 300,000 transactions, processing over 50,000 transactions per day
— ConsenSys (@ConsenSys) February 23, 2023
ConsenSys zkEVM is the culmination of the work of teams from Infura, Truffle, MetaMask, and developers from Besu and Gnark. Rollup integrations and features were intended to remove complexity from developers, improve security, and reduce onboarding time.
The announcement, shared with Cointelegraph, highlights zero switching costs as a benefit for projects within the ecosystem. Developers can build on zkEVM or migrate existing Her DApps without changing code or rewriting Smart Her contracts. zkEVM also uses Ether (ETH) for gas pricing, eliminating the need for third-party transcoding or other middleware solutions.
ConsenSys zkEVM is integrated with MetaMask aimed at facilitating user onboarding. The Infura integration also allows developers to ship her DApps at scale. Developers can also build, test, debug, and deploy Solidity smart contracts using a variety of Layer 2 developer environments powered by Truffle.
ConsenSys also aims to keep zkEVM open source after launch. Nicolas Liochon, head of research and development at ConsenSys, told Cointelegraph that the goal of the public beta testnet is to test the system under the same conditions that it would face on the higher-stakes mainnet. .
“Users and developers will be able to interact without permission with our tech stack, allowing them to stress test their systems under challenging and hostile conditions.”
Following integration with the public testnet, ConsenSys will perform a system upgrade. According to Liochon, it aims to lay the foundation for a “high-performance, trustless, decentralized network.”
The final upgrade will also initiate an audit and security process to ensure zkEVM is safe and secure before the planned mainnet launch in late 2023.
ConsenSys is in talks with key players in the Ethereum ecosystem about deploying and integrating the zkEVM testnet. Liochon stressed that scaling is a key factor in ensuring that DApps and tools can easily switch to zkEVM, with a focus on scaling to parity with EVM.
Liochon also said that efforts to bring decentralized and trustless applications to the public require simpler and cheaper systems. zkEVM aims to achieve this by building a trustless, censorship-resistant, decentralized, high-performance execution layer that scales Ethereum.
Collaboration with the wider Layer 2 ecosystem is also a focus of ConsenSys. According to Liochon, the organization is looking to collaborate with innovators in the field to host the first zkEVM “multi-prover” rollup.
This type of scaling rollup implements multiple provers that generate computational validation proofs.
