Matter Labs flagship product zkSync 2.0 was launched on Jun 01. It was dubbed “the Alpha version of zkEVM testnet” and was a major milestone in progressing towards Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible smart contracts on the zero knowledge proof based roll-ups Ethereum scaling solution. It appears that developments on that end are finally coming to fruition as zkSync announced that they have successfully migrated the first Solidity coded decentralized application (DApp) – the automated market maker (AMM) Uniswap clone onto their testnet on Oct 12!
The zkEVM era is coming!
Check out UniSync: the first migrated Solidity dApp on the @zksync 2.0 testnet:https://t.co/TeCFWGuvSh
According to the press release, it’s the first fully functional application on an EVM-Compatible zkRollup with Solidity smart contracts and Web3 front-end. It’s not hard to understand why the team chose the Uniswap clone to be the first DApp to be migrated, seeing that Uniswap is the world’s highest volume decentralized exchange and is the most used DApp on the Ethereum blockchain. This is a major milestone for smart contract compatibility, since developers don’t have to learn special purpose zero knowledge languages or recode and can simply migrate their products, without having to worry about the security, experience and re-audits.
Matter Labs says that this Uniswap launch and Solidity becoming native to zkRollups is essential to preserving the security, composability and the low effort of Ethereum smart contracts and will ease migration to zero knowledge roll-ups based scaling solution. Solidity is a battle tested programming language and has derived important lessons from expensive hacks / exploits over the years. As such, it’s behavior is better understood than coding in a novel or relatively unused programming language for zkRollups compatibility, in the absence of Solidity support.
Since, developers don’t have to recode or make their compatible to anything new, the composability is preserved. DeFi relies on money legos, composable and interconnected with each other. Plus, developers spend little time and effort to bring their DApps to zkRollups, allowing them to take advantage of the high security and scalability, offered by this scaling solution, in a painless manner.
I made my first UniSync transaction:https://t.co/SHId0XMmaU
Totally seamless – just switched MetaMask w/ Ledger to the zkSync 2.0 testnet and the swap confirmed in ~0.2 seconds.
The ball's in Warp's court!
The time bomb is ticking down rapidly on monolithic blockchains. https://t.co/G84ywbkmoN
The users who have used the Uniswap on zkEVM report that the transactions are instantaneous and the experience is seamless. It’s for certain that more work is required, before the zkEVM based roll-ups can start getting used in more formal manner, but it’s certainly a major development, which is likely to have profound impact on the future of Ethereum scaling and making the blockchain accessible for more users, who are currently priced out.
About Uniswap and zkEVM
Uniswap is an automated market making (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX), which allows trustless swaps of multiple tokens, in a decentralized and non-custodial manner. It relies on liquidity pooled through smart contracts and it’s own oracle system to determine prices and perform conversion between crypto-assets. Since it’s launch, Uniswap has had three iterations or major upgrades, each bringing new features and helping keep the premier DEX, at the top of the pack.
The zero knowledge computation based roll-ups have been recently gaining traction as an effective blockchain scaling solution. zkEVM is an Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible environment that allows smart contracts (e.g. Uniswap, Bancor, Compound etc.) execution in a manner consistent with zero knowledge proofs. It’s a core component of the zero knowledge proof roll-ups, which use validity proofs for computation.
They batch transactions and assign them with cryptographic proof, allowing them to be verified by an Ethereum smart contract and thus inheriting Ethereum base layer security by seeking validation from all nodes, before block finalization. zkEVM offers unmatched scaling, highest security, user experience benefits and allows developers to bring their DApps onto this fast growing scaling solution.
