Thread by @pseudotheos

all these zk terms... what do they mean? what's the big deal with zk proofs?

a quick 🧵breaking it down: 👇

zero knowledge (zk) cryptography is very new and an active field of research, but we're very close to having it ready for primetime with @zksync and @StarkWareLtd. let's discuss what this means for the future of ETH and blockchains in general

previously, blockchains have required all pieces of a transaction to be bundled together (verification, validation, and execution) which bottlenecks the whole process and makes it hard to scale while remaining decentralized

enter zero knowledge cryptography. it's a way to publicly verify that a computation is correct, without revealing the inputs

this means that you can start separating the blockchain (honestly, kind of like multithreading in processors) by completing executions off-chain but still have them as secure as a standard transaction.

this can scale to thousands of TPS and allows for incredibly cheap transactions as they're computed off-chain and verified onchain in a rollup

where does this leave L1 (eth) and alt-L1s (solana, bsc, ftm, avax)? Ethereum will do what it continues to do best and settle/secure transactions, but gradually more and more transactions will be on rollups, and the end user will eventually never use L1 anymore

For current L1s that are competing with ETH, it means they must adapt and become a rollup or die. they cannot be serious contenders unless they are as secure and legitimate as eth, and they are behind.

retail is using them now because they are cheap, but they are cheap because they make security tradeoffs for lower fees. this is not a successful long-term strategy with the upcoming rollup-centric future

if you are interested in learning more about the technical side of L2s, I recommend following the users below:
@epolynya
@domothy
@Swagtimus
@antiprosynth