ETHSeoul | Vitalik: In the long run, ZK-Rollup will outperform Optimistic Rollup

During the ETHSeoul event held in Seoul, South Korea from 8/5 to 8/13, the biggest highlight was Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. He predicted at the conference that there are two approaches to Ethereum's Rollup scaling solution: ZK and Optimistic, and ultimately ZK-Rollup will prevail.

The Prophecy: ZK-Rollup to Become Mainstream in Ten Years

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin emphasized in a meeting that while Optimistic scaling solutions are more mature, the ZK-oriented zero-knowledge proof does not require a seven-day withdrawal period, giving it a fundamental advantage that will lead to its long-term success.

"My view is that in the long run, ZK-Rollup will beat Optimistic Rollup because they have the fundamental advantage that you don't need a seven-day withdrawal period." However, Vitalik stated that he believes this will happen in 10 years or more. Vitalik admitted at the ETHSeoul meeting that current ZK-Rollup solutions are still immature and difficult to build an ecosystem on, while Optimistic Rollup is evidently more mature. Although ZK-Rollup is faster, the lack of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) makes it difficult for them to run decentralized applications like DeFi protocols.

However, everything will be resolved once ZK-Rollup is compatible with EVM. Layer 2 solutions like zk-EVM are planned to be introduced by projects such as zkSync, Scroll, Polygon, allowing ZK-Rollup to run various smart contracts.

Furthermore, according to past reports, the fees for both Optimistic and ZK current solutions are higher than Vitalik's expectations. Vitalik also acknowledged that current rollup Layer 2 solutions are far from optimized, and he previously stated that Layer 2 transaction fees on Ethereum need to drop to $0.05 to be truly accepted.

Vitalik Introduces Zero-Knowledge Proof NFT Privacy Transmission Technology

Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik introduced zero-knowledge proof technology zk-SNARKs, which allows the ERC-721 token standard commonly used for NFTs to transmit in a way that only the recipient can see who the new owner of the NFT is. He gave an example: when you send an NFT to vitalik.eth, only Vitalik can see that Vitalik is the new owner of that NFT. However, he has not yet thought of a more efficient fee payment method, which may require 5-50 times the current fees.

The Ethereum community has long had high expectations for the application of zero-knowledge proofs and blockchain. The Ethereum Foundation has many explanations on this, and Vitalik has previously written about many applications that zero-knowledge proofs can bring.