Ethereum’s commitment to rollups is strong and credible; rollups’ commitment to Ethereum ought to be the same.

Taiko is a fully decentralized, Ethereum-equivalent ZK-Rollup (Type 1 ZK-EVM).

Our goal is to scale Ethereum while upholding the root principles of security, permissionlessness, and decentralization.

We started building Taiko in Q1 2022 and are currently working on the ZK-EVM circuits, the L2 rollup node, and the protocol smart contracts on L1. In this article we would like to share the core milestones on our way to the Taiko Mainnet:

• In Dec 2022 we launched the Alpha-1 Testnet.

• Now we’re close to the Alpha-2 Testnet that is expected to launch in March with permissionless provers and partial ZK-EVM circuits.

• And what is after that? Below are further milestones on our way to the Taiko Mainnet with full ZK-EVM circuits, decentralized proposers, and decentralized provers planned for early 2024.

Our way is driven by Taiko’s core principles: we don’t use shortcuts to prioritize development speed, we just do our job to prioritize security and make a solid contribution to the Ethereum “Infinite Garden”.

• We prioritize security above all else.

• We keep the protocol design simple, and restrain ourselves from changes that would break our Ethereum-equivalence.

• All security assumptions are directly or indirectly enforced by Ethereum and the protocol.

• Both proposers and provers are decentralized. No single party is able to control all transaction ordering or be solely responsible for proving blocks. The protocol keeps working in a reliable manner in adversarial situations.

• Anyone willing is be able to join and leave the network at any time, without causing significant disturbance to the network. No single entity has the power to allowlist or blocklist participants.

• Taiko is Ethereum-equivalent: we make no changes to the way Ethereum clients execute bytecode and store data: use the same hash functions, state trees, transaction trees, precompiled contracts, and other in-consensus logic. Ethereum-equivalence is a continual process. It means not only being Ethereum-equivalent now but continuing to inherit future Ethereum upgrades. It also enables us to contribute upstream improvements to Ethereum L1.

The classic blockchain trilemma says that between “decentralization”, “security”, and “scalability” you can only have two. An Ethereum-equivalent ZK-rollup allows you to choose all three without compromise.

Taiko adds the missing part, “scaling”, to empower the Ethereum Ecosystem while keeping the experience of its participants equivalent to what they are already used to.

Building a ZK-EVM is a long and challenging process, but it’s worth it. It requires restraint, patience, and a long term view, but Ethereum’s core values clearly illuminate the path forward. We are on our way, and we are waiting for you to join!

Thanks for reading our blog post! 🥁

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To stay updated on the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz

• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/taiko_xyz

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz