zkSync Era Rolls Out To General Users In Alpha, Matter Labs Beats Polygon To First Zero Knowledge EVM

Summary:

• On Friday, Matter Labs launched zkSync Era for users, beating other zero-knowledge developers like Polygon to the punch.
• The project already opened its so-called “first ZK Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible” product to developers a month ago.
• Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski cautioned users to “take it carefully” and not “just ape into it” as the technology is new.
• Polygon Labs plans to launch its own zkEVM on Monday.

On Friday, Matter Labs, the entity behind Ethereum scaling solution zkSync, launched its zero-knowledge Ethereum virtual Machine-compatible product dubbed zkSync Era for general crypto users. Matter Labs’ Era was made available to developers last month ahead of today’s alpha launch.

“ZK rollups are the Holy Grail of scaling Ethereum”, said Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski during an interview. Zero-knowledge rollups or ZK rollups function as a blockchain scaling solution built on zero-knowledge proofs, a type of cryptography technology first created in the 1980s.

Projects building solutions with ZK rollup technology aim to scale the Ethereum network by offering an alternative for blockchain transactions, usually with faster swaps and cheaper transaction costs.

These rollups settle transactions away from the main Ethereum network. After, ZK rollups then broadcasts a basket of transactions back to the Ethereum mainnet as a single transaction using cryptographic tech to generate proof that the transactions were handled correctly.

CEO Gluchowski named zkSync Era’s native Account Abstraction as a feature that should separate Matter Labs from competitors. Account Abstraction allows users to decide how they will settle transaction costs or gas fees as they’re commonly known in crypto.

Over 200 projects including decentralized crypto exchanges like Uniswap and Sushiswap will deploy on zkSync Era, per Friday’s announcement. CEO Gluchowski cautioned users to gradually ease into using Era as it’s a new technology and still in alpha.

zkSync Era, The First zkEVM On Ethereum

Friday’s alpha launch crowned a race between scaling solutions to be the first to launch an EVM-compatible zero-knowledge rollup product. zkEVMs combined ZK tech and the EVM’s smart contract environment, allowing developers to build solutions that scale without compromising on security.

ZK developers like Matter Labs and Polygon Labs have competed for years for who would be the first to bring zkEVMs to market. Coincidentally, Polygon plans to unveil its own zkEVM on Monday, Mar. 27.