A quarterly report focused on zero-knowledge (ZK) technologies suggests that privacy, scaling, and identity solutions are significant drivers of adoption in the blockchain space.
Validator service provider ZKValidator's report titled "The State of ZK" explores insights from the zero-knowledge space, highlighting major and emerging use cases, research, product launches, and notable investment rounds.
Key takes aways focus on use cases for zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs). Cryptographic methods allow a party to verify data or claims without revealing the information. Privacy stands out as the industry's most important adoption driver at 12.9 percent. Scaling was the second most prominent use case for zero-knowledge technologies, accounting for 9.46%. Identity solutions and new zero-knowledge use cases come in third and fourth, indicating the interest of the blockchain ecosystem in exploring how zero-knowledge technology can be applied to identity management and other new applications. Zero-knowledge machine learning (ZK-ML) was also identified as the most attractive new use case in this field.
Insights emerge from the company's collaborations with industry players including ZK Hack, zkSummit, rhino.fi, Geometry and University College London. ZKValidator also collected data and information together with the production and management participants of the Zero Knowledge Summit 9 in Lisbon 4th on April. Also highlighted in zkValidator's report is the launch of Polygon and zkSync's zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM), as well as key data from two Ethereum scaling protocols.
zkSync Era, launched just over a month ago, has attracted more daily active users than Polygon's zkEVM. The report speculates that rumors of a possible zkSync airdrop later in 2023 may be responsible for the gap in user numbers between the two VMs.
The report also covers the development of new products, including Geometry's Semacaulk, a new zero-knowledge set membership protocol that saves gas compared to Merkle tree structures while ensuring that proofs can be generated quickly and at roughly the same gas costver Costed.
The $7M ZPrize competition in 2022 helps drive innovation in ZK technology, and Multiscalar Multiplication (MSM) on Android mobile devices grew out of a development competition aimed at fostering ZK solutions. According to ZKValidator's report, MSM reduces the proof generation4 time from 2 To about half a second, making mobile payments in ZK much easier. The report also mentions a paper proposing a fast GPU-accelerated zero-knowledge proof system that reduces proof generation time in ZK proofs by exploiting the hardware similarity of GPUs. Graphics processing units (GPUs) have become very useful hardware for cryptocurrency miners because of their ability to process data simultaneously and can be used for machine learning, video editing, and gaming.
In 2023, various other zero-knowledge projects are identified in the field of decentralized identity, interoperability, and payments within the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems. This includes Telepathy, a Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK) interoperability protocol for Ethereum. The protocol allows users to read the state of Ethereum on any chain while preserving the security of the Ethereum light client protocol. Also mentioned is Sismo Connect, a privacy-preserving single sign-on method for applications on Web2 and Web3. The technology allows developers to implement ZK technology in their applications.
Finally, Manta Network has also extended its ZK capabilities to allow privacy support for non-fungible tokens and soul-bound tokens. The =nil; investment in ethereum R&D firm The =nil; also stood out; the foundation raised $22 million to continue developing the proof-of-concept market. This solution allows layer 1 and layer 2 blockchains to outsource the production of ZK proofs.
Proof-of-Zk developer Proven raised $15.8 million in a seed round, while Polyhedra Network raised $10 million for its blockchain interoperability infrastructure platform. Throughout the first quarter of 2023, zero-knowledge aggregation has been in the spotlight. Polygon released its open-source zkEVM Ethereum scaling technology to mainnet on March 27, while several Ethereum decentralized finance protocols have adopted zkSync since its alpha release in March 2023.
