Recently, the news that Paradigm led a $43 million investment in Succinct has ignited the primary market, and the total financing amount of the just TGE @PolyhedraZK has even reached $75 million. It can be seen that the underlying ZKP technology infrastructure carries great expectations for the capital market.

In fact, the potential of ZK for layer2 expansion has only been partially explored. In terms of full-chain interactive operability, there is still a lot of room for imagination with ZK technology. Why? Next, let me talk about my understanding:

In addition to Polyhedra, projects such as @SuccinctLabs, @RiscZero, @ProjectZKM, and others based on ZKP technology for interactive communication are all trying to explore the potential of ZK technology and strive for the large-scale adoption of ZK technology.

Most people only understand ZK zero-knowledge proof technology in terms of "privacy," "scalability," or "chain abstraction," and few people think about why ZK technology can achieve these, and whether ZK technology is fully utilized at present.

The reason for this "misunderstanding" is that the true ZK technology currently has only scratched the surface, and they all serve the more upstream layer0, zkSync, Optimism, and other star projects, such as:

Polyhedra provides the zkBridge cross-chain asset transfer solution for layerZero; RISC Zero provides a ZK fraud proof system for OP-Rollups to reduce the time cost of fraud proof; ZKM uses ZK General-Purpose to achieve secure verifiable computation, ultimately empowering Ethereum to become a global settlement layer.

In short: these underlying ZK technology projects are all exploring the large-scale application of ZK zero-knowledge proof technology from different perspectives and striving to overcome several key challenges:

1. Develop general-purpose zero-knowledge proof technology;
2. Build a distributed proof system;
3. Optimize the computational cost of ZK proof process;
4. Provide a development environment compatible with multiple programming languages;
5. Expand the hardware support range for zero-knowledge proof computation, including PC, mobile devices, IoT devices, and so on.

Compared to the more upstream technical services of projects such as RISC Zero, Succinct, ZKM, @Polyhedra is closer to the current market landing in solving the problem of cross-chain "interactive bridge." Let's take the more familiar zkBridge as an example to demonstrate where the hardcore strength of ZKP technology lies.

Polyhedra has built a distributed ZK proof system deVirgo. Virgo is an open-source protocol that helps developers build and verify non-interactive zero-knowledge proof protocols, and nodes can become Provers without "trusted initialization" directly and permissionless. deVirgo is an efficient distributed ZKP protocol based on the Virgo protocol, which can support multiple distributed computing networks, and the proof generation time can also be shortened.

The first zk-SNARK protocol implemented based on the deVirgo distributed proof system is zkBridge, which aims to achieve information communication, asset cross-chain, and data sharing in a cross-chain environment. It has already implemented cross-chain communication services for over 25 chains. The layer0 we are familiar with uses the zkBridge service provided by Polyhedra, and layerZero focuses more on the infrastructure construction services for the entire chain environment, chains, DApps, and so on.

Why is zkBridge so important? Because it can directly utilize the capabilities of POS chain nodes themselves to achieve "consensus layer" communication interaction.

Generally, when we want to achieve interactive operations between two chains A and B, a common approach is to build a "chain within a chain," which has its own consensus mechanism and distributed verification nodes to ensure the security of cross-chain asset interaction. The relay chain will deploy interactive smart contracts on various chains to enhance service capabilities. The total smart contract of the relay chain will control the assets distributed on various chains.

For example, when a user initiates an asset transfer from chain A to chain B, the relay chain will first lock a certain asset in the smart contract on chain A, and then release a certain asset in the smart contract on chain B. Throughout the process, the relay chain needs to monitor all the records of operations on the chains to ensure the correct locking and releasing of assets between different chains. Only in this way can the relay chain control the total balance of assets, manage the ledger well, and avoid double spending and other situations.

However, the relay chain itself will incur additional trust costs, and users must trust the relay chain. The relay chain must deploy smart contracts with the same interaction standards in various homomorphic chain environments. If it encounters non-smart contract chains like BTC, additional development and adaptation are required to ensure the secure circulation of assets.

In conclusion, the cross-chain services provided by the relay chain will ultimately test the Security Committee behind the total smart contract management, and this committee is composed of a group with identities or an MPC multi-signature management entity, which becomes a "distrust factor."

As the most common cross-chain solution, most layer2 adopts a security committee governance to ensure the security of assets. Once the committee intends to act maliciously, the resulting losses will be irreversible.

The amazing thing about zkBridge is that it can fully leverage the potential of ZK zero-knowledge proof technology, allowing nodes maintaining the consensus layer between two chains to directly establish communication and safely control the transfer of assets. It provides interactive operability of the deVirgo distributed system, and is not a specific relay chain, but more like an open-source, permissionless, and trusted third-party component.

Nodes of chain A can initiate asset transfer declarations by generating zk-SNARKs states through deVirgo, and nodes of chain B can directly verify the correctness of the ZKP proof through deVirgo, with very low computational and time costs.

Obviously, technology service solutions like zkBridge are more likely to gain market trust than the relay chain service mode with MPC multi-signature security committee governance. It is also safer and more efficient. (Note: This is a relative concept, and many current cross-chain solutions still use MPC multi-signature, and ZK infrastructure needs to be further strengthened.)

zkBridge allows full nodes of the Pos chain to participate in the entire proof generation and verification process, but it is not conducive to rapid and extensive expansion. What to do? Polyhedra solves this problem through zkLightClient.

1. Using a light client can reduce resource requirements and consume fewer storage, bandwidth, and computing resources;
2. Using a light client can be horizontally compatible with non-smart contract chains or other heterogeneous chains, providing a more extensive interactive operability. For example, the BTC chain can only control asset transfers using a light client and hash time lock;
3. Using a light client, combined with the lightweight integrated assistance of layerZero, can simplify the threshold for developers, shorten the development cycle, and accelerate the popularization of the entire chain infrastructure.

Since the calculation, verification, and communication processes of zero-knowledge proofs require a series of processing operations, it is necessary to balance costs, consumption, and timeliness, and there are too many technical challenges to overcome. To some extent, the "chain within a chain" cross-chain solution has become a market choice.

However, looking to the future, ZK cross-chain solutions, including Polyhedra, Succinct, ZKM, RISC Zero, are all improving and optimizing towards lightweight, efficient, and low energy consumption.

To go into more detail, for example, Polyhedra has proposed Single Slot Finality using deVirgo and an improved signature scheme. BLS is a digital signature scheme that allows multiple signatures to be combined into one to reduce storage and data transmission. By combining BLS signatures with ZKP, compact proofs can be created to prove that necessary signatures have been completed without the need to transmit and verify the signatures themselves, thereby reducing latency and achieving finality after each slot block is generated.

In addition, as the demand for BTC layer2 to use BTC as the main chain asset settlement layer increases, Polyhedra has specially set up a Bitcoin AVS node system by borrowing the double pledge economic system of Eigenlayer, allowing Bitcoin to have interoperability with minimal trust. At the same time, by using a double mapping liquidity pool on BTC and ETH and the role cooperation locking of Maker, and applying the FRI special encoding method, it is possible to directly verify ZK proofs on Bitcoin, completing the most difficult part of ZK full-chain interoperability.

The goal of ZK is not only to be the Endgame of layer2, but also to become the Endgame of the entire chain infrastructure.

The above

Polyhedra, as a representative of the landing practice of ZKP technology, is accelerating the landing of various ZKP solutions. The above only lists a part of it, just to let everyone clearly feel the advantages of ZKP as the underlying framework of technology.

In fact, the potential of the entire ZKP track far exceeds what Polyhedra provides. More upstream suppliers of ZK technology infrastructure are continuously accelerating the large-scale popularization of ZKP technology in various vertical segments such as ZK cross-chain bridge, ZK lightweight, ZK General-Purpose, ZK Coprocessor, ZK distributed Prover system, and so on.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the maturity of each ZK vertical segment will have a reshaping effect on the current industry. What we see now is only the tip of the iceberg of ZK technology application landing.

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