【ChainNews Selection】3-minute understanding of Ethereum scaling engine StarkEx used for Reddit reward system

Vitalik clarified that this does not fall under the Rollup scheme, but is Validium.

Written by: LeftOfCenter, originally titled "3 Minutes to Understand Ethereum Scaling Engine StarkEx Demonstrating Reddit Points System"

Zero-knowledge proof research institution StarkWare demonstrated the scalability of the Reddit points system, utilizing a scaling technology called StarkEx. StarkWare refers to it as a ZK-Rollup scaling engine.

In this demonstration, the StarkEx scaling solution created 1.3 million accounts and deposited initial funds for all users in the "FortNiteBR" subreddit on Reddit in a trustless manner on the Ethereum mainnet, effectively showcasing how these tokens can be brought to the mainnet quickly and at a lower gas cost. This interaction is trustless, supported by a series of STARK proofs and state commitments submitted to the Ethereum mainnet.

According to on-chain data released by StarkWare, StarkEx transferred all Reddit subreddits to the Ethereum mainnet, with an average cost of 600 gas fees per transaction, which is 30% lower than the average at the time.

The test lasted for about 12 hours and only utilized a portion of the Ethereum network, around 2.5%, thus not causing network congestion. By comparison, performing the same operation directly on the Ethereum mainnet would take 4.5 days even when occupying the entire network.

StarkEx reduces Ethereum gas fees by 30%

Additionally, in this demonstration, StarkEx's scaling solution was used to achieve token transfers and transactions.

According to StarkEx's description, the test involved minting 2 ^ 60 ERC-20 token Mocks and then storing them in a smart contract representing a subreddit.

Subsequently, StarkEx transferred these newly minted token assets to a "subreddit vault" account in a trustless manner, where each batch token transfer refers to moving tokens from a Reddit subreddit administrator account to an individual account within that subreddit. A total of 159 batch token transfers were conducted in this test, with each batch containing 8,192 transfers. For each batch transfer operation, a STARK proof was generated to prove the integrity of the batch and update the account balances in the off-chain Merkle tree.

These proofs (in 13 independent transactions, averaging 380,000 gas fees per transaction, totaling 4.94 million gas fees for each proof) were then sent on-chain along with a commitment update to the Merkle tree state.

As a result, each transaction required 603 gas fees (4.94 million gas fees / 8192 transfers). To avoid burdening the already congested mainnet, StarkEx submitted a total of 2067 transactions (submitted in 13 batches, each batch with 159 transactions).

This technology has also caught the attention of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who inquired through a tweet comment about which scaling solution it belongs to, Rollup or Plasma?

After an explanation by StarkEx's product Avihu Levy, Vitalik believed it does not belong to Rollup and adopted the suggestion of StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson, proposing to call it "Validium," which means "valid" in Latin. Vitalik suggested that the Validium solution could be referred to as a "zk Rollup for off-chain data" or a "Snarks version of Plasma." However, he also mentioned that in the future, "zk Rollup" could be renamed to "Validium Rollup" or a similar name.

According to the educational material from Matter Labs, the development team behind the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution ZK-Sync based on zero-knowledge proofs, the main difference between zkRollup and Validium (of which StarkEx is a type) lies in:

zk Rollup: Data is kept on-chain, and its security is guaranteed as long as at least one Ethereum full node exists.
Validium: Data is kept off-chain. Its security guarantee relies on having at least one honest out of n permissioned data validators.

The Validium solution allows users to download off-chain data independently, but they still need to exit in order to recover in case the operator goes offline suddenly or permanently.

Vitalik Buterin believes that the advantage of the Validium scaling solution lies in its simplified logic for proving off-chain data system validity and enables arbitrary execution within the second layer. However, this leads to exit delays, so Vitalik considers that the Validium solution is far inferior to the zk Rollup solution.

After the education, it is clear that referring to StarkWare's StarkEx as a "type of zk Rollup" makes no sense. In response to this, Loopring Protocol founder Wang Dong stated that they have always viewed StarkWare as a competitor, and the fact that their technology is not, means that users must trust their alliance to safeguard asset security, failing to reach the same level of security as the Ethereum mainnet.

This article is authorized for reposting with permission from ChainNews, article source: ChainNews (ID: chainnewscom)