The Bitcoin network recently faced a litmus test due to increased demand for writing Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens to the blockchain.
Resulting fee increases and transaction congestion frustrated broader Bitcoin, Community, considering that some BRC-20 tokens involve memecoins that have attracted billions of dollars in funding in recent weeks.
The Ethereum ecosystem has benefited from the development of scaling solutions that have resulted in massive improvements in network capacity and processing power. Zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) in particular have made headlines over the past few months, with several projects empl oying scaling techniques .
Cointelegraph interviewed Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of Ethereum-focused StarkWare and pioneer of Zero-Knowledge Scalable Transparent Proofs of Knowledge (zk-STARKS), on whether the technology could be the answer to Bitcoin's latest challenge. ZK-proofs are cry ptographic Protocols that Allow a party to provide the authenticity of a statement or data with it revealing anFormation. Y Reducing The Computational Load Required to Verify Transactions and Other Data Stored On-Chain, While Increasing the CapaCity of the Blockchain.
The renowned mathematician and cryptographer sees Bitcoin as the beginning of his quest around validity, cryptography, and the promise of zero-knowledge proofs to improve blockchain technology. Emphasizing scaling solutions and the “deeply intertwined” nature of blockchains, Ben- Sasson summarized the potential of ZK proofs to benefit the Bitcoin network: "Validity proofs and STARKs allow you to use mathematical integrity in a very efficient way to extend the integrity track covered by the blockchain to invite anyone to participate and add more capacity to the network."
Bitcoin's blockchain will continue to act as the inner circle of integrity, and ZK proofs extend the origin of integrity and bring more capacity, creating what Ben-Sasson calls a “positive flywheel” effect: “The more capacity you bring in, the more social features you can use; even with money, you can make micropayments, or if you allow smart contracts, you can add new things. Then, people have an interest in the system. The more trust it adds, the more value it adds." Ben-Sasson reiterated his belief that the Bitcoin network could see greater integrity and efficiency from the mathematical advantages of proofs of validity. He added that bitcoin developers Greg Maxwell, Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn were early supporters of zk-STARKs for transparent proofs of validity and privacy, which do not require a trusted setup and remain quantum secure.
The potential of Bitcoin first and foremost to serve as decentralized hard money to allow for more general forms of computing and social functionality remains a point of discussion within its community. For Ben-Sasson, the potential to incorporate ZK proofs is driven by market demand for additional functionality of BRC-20 tokens on top of Bitcoin: “To make it [BRC-20] really have the level of integrity that Bitcoin provides, there has to be a hard fork that verifies and validates these things and has the integrity of Bitcoin. That’s a huge decision, and a huge point of contention." The ZeroSync Association is a newly formed startup developing ZK Proof-powered tools that allow users to verify the state of the Bitcoin network without downloading the blockchain or trusting a third party for verification.
ZeroSync’s Proof of Validity allows users to instantly verify Bitcoin’s chain state without downloading the over 500 GB of blockchain data currently required to synchronize Bitcoin nodes.
ZeroSync co-founder Robin Linus told Cointelegraph that its proof-of-chain state won’t directly solve network congestion, but it will eliminate the need for users to download the inscriptions that have been clogging up the bitcoin blockchain.
However, ZK-proofs are still expected to help solve the current network congestion problem. According to Linus, ZeroSync has also developed a Bitcoin client-side verification protocol called zkCoins, which allows for up to 100 coin transactions per second: "It uses inscriptions, but has a much lower on-chain footprint than BRC-20, and it doesn't bloat the UTXO set."
Linus added that a zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive proof of knowledge (zk-SNARK) validator on Bitcoin’s main layer could enable a whole range of scaling solutions, including ZK-rollups, trustless bridges to sidechains, and transferring BTC Potential for pegging zkCoins to enhance privacy and increase throughput:
“It’s great to see validity proofs are now gaining popularity in the bitcoin community. People have started discussing the new opcode on the bitcoin-dev mailing list.” Linus also noted that other Bitcoin layer 2 scaling solutions such as the Lightning Network, Fedimint, and Cashu a privacy-preserving custodian based on Chaumian eCash have been increasingly under fire following Ordinals and BRC-20 minting-driven network congestion. Much attention.
