zkEVM has arrived, the first EVM-compatible ZK Rollup on Ethereum’s testnet.

Last May, we laid out our vision for zkSync’s zkEVM, a permissionless, Turing-complete ZK Rollup that would allow developers to build and deploy decentralized applications in a** low-fee, highly scalable layer-2 environment using Ethereum’s native programming language, Solidity.** This system would avoid reliance on human operators to validate and finalize the legitimacy of transactions but instead rely on cryptography. It would be able to directly inherit from Ethereum’s best-in-class security, decentralization, and network effects while providing **new functionality that expands the design space for application developers. We preordained for this system to be community-run through a path of **progressive decentralization, modeled by the values and ethos of Ethereum. We imagined that such a system would not complicate the already imperfect user experience of Ethereum, but instead improve it.

The promise of a ZK Rollup capable of general computation has been predicted by many to be a key component in the endgame of blockchain scalability, but as little as one year ago, many of the top minds in the space believed we were years away. Today, we’re launching one to the public on Ethereum’s testnet.

We’ve received hundreds of requests from developers looking to deploy on zkSync 2.0, and in an effort to help users discover some of these projects we’ve released a new ecosystem hub developers can add their projects to.

We recognize developers need certain infrastructure in place to be successful, and Matter Labs has been working with teams across the ecosystem to ensure these key pillars are available. Here are some of the projects we can talk about working to provide this infrastructure:

FIAT On & Off Ramps

Banxa, Ramp Network, UTORG, and MoonPay will all provide the ability to purchase crypto directly on zkSync through a variety of payment methods, allowing users to avoid L1 fees altogether. Major exchanges including Crypto.com, Bybit, Huobi, Blockchain.com, OKEx and Ripio are building direct deposit and withdrawal capabilities with zkSync for their users, and LayerSwap is working to support the same functionality for multiple major exchanges.

Bridges

Celer, Connext, ZigZag, Orbiter, DAI Wormhole, Composable, Hop Exchange, LayerZero, PolyNetwork, deBridge, and Nomad will allow the token transfers quickly and inexpensively between zkSync 2.0 and other L1 and L2 protocols.

Data Oracles

Chainlink will provide oracle services to developers requiring off-chain data feeds in their applications.

Protocol Indexing and Search

Graph Protocol and Covalent will both index zkSync 2.0 to make the chain more searchable and accessible to developers.

Wallets

Users will be able to sign transactions and manage their assets with most Ethereum wallets on zkSync 2.0, including Metamask, Argent, Numio, 1inch Wallet, MyKey, and imToken.

Block Explorers, Developer Tools, and Voting!

We’ll be pushing to ensure users can easily explore block data through Etherscan and Blockscout, in addition to a block explorer being developed by Matter Labs. Tenderly will integrate zkSync allowing developers to monitor and test smart contracts. Gnosis safe will allow users to safekeep assets and provide multi-sig functionality. Snapshot will allow decentralized voting on zkSync for DAOs, and Hardhat will allow devs to easily compile contracts and run them on a development network.

Funding

BitDAO has recently funded zkDAO, a $200 million accelerator focused on providing funding and grants to projects inside the zkSync ecosystem. The DAO will also fund ecosystem education, research, and security.

The current version of the zkSync 2.0 solves the needs of most applications on Ethereum, and with more features planned for release soon, zkSync 2.0 will provide developers with a design space to experiment with applications not possible on Ethereum today. With this release, we are supporting the following features:

• **Native support of ECDSA signatures. **Unlike the first version of zkSync and most of the ZK Rollups, no special operation is required to register the user’s private key. Any account can be managed in L2 with the same private key that is used for L1.

• Solidity 0.8.x support. Deploy your existing codebase with little to no changes required.

• **Web3 API. **With small exceptions, our API is fully compatible with Ethereum. This allows seamless integration with existing indexers, explorers, etc.

• **Support for Ethereum cryptographic primitives. **zkSync natively supports keccak256, sha256, and ecrecover via precompiles.

• Hardhat plugin. Allows easy testing and development of smart contracts on zkSync.

• **L1 → L2 smart contract messaging. **Allows developers to pass data from Ethereum L1 to smart contracts on zkSync, providing required information to run various smart contracts.

There are some features that are not included in our current testnet that we’re looking to ship in future upgrades. In estimated chronological order, this includes:

• **L2 → L1 smart contract messaging. Will **allow developers to pass data from zkSync to L1, once again, allowing developers to build more robust applications.

• Support for Vyper Programming Language.

• **Account abstraction. **Imagine being able to implement custom logic for signature checking for your account. Or maybe social recovery? Currently, on most of the EVM chains, users need to deploy smart contract wallets for such purposes. All of this would be easily supported with account abstraction.

• Support for older versions of Solidity. We are actively working on supporting different versions of Solidity to enable seamless integration for the existing projects.

• **zkPorter. **One of the largest and most important features, zkPorter will allow users to choose between a zkRollup account featuring the highest security & 20x fee reduction compared to Ethereum, or a zkPorter account featuring stable transaction fees of just a few cents in a different security model (much higher than that of a sidechain). Both zkPorter accounts, and zkRollup accounts, will be able to interact seamlessly together under the hood.

Developers looking to begin experimenting and testing with zkEVM can head over to our documentation and begin deploying applications today. For questions and discussion, you can join our Discord.

We are also releasing Portal, a tool for developers and users that contains a wallet, token bridge, a faucet for requesting test ETH, and the ability to easily perform transaction searches.

In a world where code is law, and billions of dollars in assets are secured, it’s necessary we build systems that do not fail. As made clear by its name, the testnet is an opportunity to test things without risking real funds, because we’re not yet at a stage where we should be risking real funds (Matter Labs opinion: currently no rollup should be trusted with significant funds, as the technology has not endured the test of time). We expect (and hope) things break. We encourage the community to try and break things. We will be shipping updates frequently, some of which may require regenesis and require developers to redeploy their contracts. Please keep this in mind!

A big thank you to the tireless work of researchers, developers, and the community who have laid the foundation for this technology. We’re inspired by those building our decentralized future, and can’t wait to see what comes!

For more updates, follow us on Twitter and join the conversation on Discord.

If you’re interested in joining Matter Labs to help scale Ethereum, we encourage you to view our job openings.

zkEVM has arrived, the first EVM-compatible ZK Rollup on Ethereum’s testnet.

Last May, we laid out our vision for zkSync’s zkEVM, a permissionless, Turing-complete ZK Rollup that would allow developers to build and deploy decentralized applications in a** low-fee, highly scalable layer-2 environment using Ethereum’s native programming language, Solidity.** This system would avoid reliance on human operators to validate and finalize the legitimacy of transactions but instead rely on cryptography. It would be able to directly inherit from Ethereum’s best-in-class security, decentralization, and network effects while providing **new functionality that expands the design space for application developers. We preordained for this system to be community-run through a path of **progressive decentralization, modeled by the values and ethos of Ethereum. We imagined that such a system would not complicate the already imperfect user experience of Ethereum, but instead improve it.

The promise of a ZK Rollup capable of general computation has been predicted by many to be a key component in the endgame of blockchain scalability, but as little as one year ago, many of the top minds in the space believed we were years away. Today, we’re launching one to the public on Ethereum’s testnet.

We’ve received hundreds of requests from developers looking to deploy on zkSync 2.0, and in an effort to help users discover some of these projects we’ve released a new ecosystem hub developers can add their projects to.

We recognize developers need certain infrastructure in place to be successful, and Matter Labs has been working with teams across the ecosystem to ensure these key pillars are available. Here are some of the projects we can talk about working to provide this infrastructure:

FIAT On & Off Ramps

Banxa, Ramp Network, UTORG, and MoonPay will all provide the ability to purchase crypto directly on zkSync through a variety of payment methods, allowing users to avoid L1 fees altogether. Major exchanges including Crypto.com, Bybit, Huobi, Blockchain.com, OKEx and Ripio are building direct deposit and withdrawal capabilities with zkSync for their users, and LayerSwap is working to support the same functionality for multiple major exchanges.

Bridges

Celer, Connext, ZigZag, Orbiter, DAI Wormhole, Composable, Hop Exchange, LayerZero, PolyNetwork, deBridge, and Nomad will allow the token transfers quickly and inexpensively between zkSync 2.0 and other L1 and L2 protocols.

Data Oracles

Chainlink will provide oracle services to developers requiring off-chain data feeds in their applications.

Protocol Indexing and Search

Graph Protocol and Covalent will both index zkSync 2.0 to make the chain more searchable and accessible to developers.

Wallets

Users will be able to sign transactions and manage their assets with most Ethereum wallets on zkSync 2.0, including Metamask, Argent, Numio, 1inch Wallet, MyKey, and imToken.

Block Explorers, Developer Tools, and Voting!

We’ll be pushing to ensure users can easily explore block data through Etherscan and Blockscout, in addition to a block explorer being developed by Matter Labs. Tenderly will integrate zkSync allowing developers to monitor and test smart contracts. Gnosis safe will allow users to safekeep assets and provide multi-sig functionality. Snapshot will allow decentralized voting on zkSync for DAOs, and Hardhat will allow devs to easily compile contracts and run them on a development network.

Funding

BitDAO has recently funded zkDAO, a $200 million accelerator focused on providing funding and grants to projects inside the zkSync ecosystem. The DAO will also fund ecosystem education, research, and security.

The current version of the zkSync 2.0 solves the needs of most applications on Ethereum, and with more features planned for release soon, zkSync 2.0 will provide developers with a design space to experiment with applications not possible on Ethereum today. With this release, we are supporting the following features:

• **Native support of ECDSA signatures. **Unlike the first version of zkSync and most of the ZK Rollups, no special operation is required to register the user’s private key. Any account can be managed in L2 with the same private key that is used for L1.

• Solidity 0.8.x support. Deploy your existing codebase with little to no changes required.

• **Web3 API. **With small exceptions, our API is fully compatible with Ethereum. This allows seamless integration with existing indexers, explorers, etc.

• **Support for Ethereum cryptographic primitives. **zkSync natively supports keccak256, sha256, and ecrecover via precompiles.

• Hardhat plugin. Allows easy testing and development of smart contracts on zkSync.

• **L1 → L2 smart contract messaging. **Allows developers to pass data from Ethereum L1 to smart contracts on zkSync, providing required information to run various smart contracts.

There are some features that are not included in our current testnet that we’re looking to ship in future upgrades. In estimated chronological order, this includes:

• **L2 → L1 smart contract messaging. Will **allow developers to pass data from zkSync to L1, once again, allowing developers to build more robust applications.

• Support for Vyper Programming Language.

• **Account abstraction. **Imagine being able to implement custom logic for signature checking for your account. Or maybe social recovery? Currently, on most of the EVM chains, users need to deploy smart contract wallets for such purposes. All of this would be easily supported with account abstraction.

• Support for older versions of Solidity. We are actively working on supporting different versions of Solidity to enable seamless integration for the existing projects.

• **zkPorter. **One of the largest and most important features, zkPorter will allow users to choose between a zkRollup account featuring the highest security & 20x fee reduction compared to Ethereum, or a zkPorter account featuring stable transaction fees of just a few cents in a different security model (much higher than that of a sidechain). Both zkPorter accounts, and zkRollup accounts, will be able to interact seamlessly together under the hood.

Developers looking to begin experimenting and testing with zkEVM can head over to our documentation and begin deploying applications today. For questions and discussion, you can join our Discord.

We are also releasing Portal, a tool for developers and users that contains a wallet, token bridge, a faucet for requesting test ETH, and the ability to easily perform transaction searches.

In a world where code is law, and billions of dollars in assets are secured, it’s necessary we build systems that do not fail. As made clear by its name, the testnet is an opportunity to test things without risking real funds, because we’re not yet at a stage where we should be risking real funds (Matter Labs opinion: currently no rollup should be trusted with significant funds, as the technology has not endured the test of time). We expect (and hope) things break. We encourage the community to try and break things. We will be shipping updates frequently, some of which may require regenesis and require developers to redeploy their contracts. Please keep this in mind!

A big thank you to the tireless work of researchers, developers, and the community who have laid the foundation for this technology. We’re inspired by those building our decentralized future, and can’t wait to see what comes!

For more updates, follow us on Twitter and join the conversation on Discord.

If you’re interested in joining Matter Labs to help scale Ethereum, we encourage you to view our job openings.