Rollups: The Promising Layer 2 Solution for Scaling Ethereum

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1/👋Hey #CryptoTwitter!! We have already seen a lot of tweets on $ARB airdrop and how people could utilise another upcoming airdrop of $ZKS (@zksync). This thread 🧵 is not about airdrops, but about rollups, a promising Layer 2 solution that could help scale Ethereum.

2/🌉But first, what are Layer 2 solutions?. The Ethereum network is often congested, leading to slow transactions and high gas fees. Layer 2 solutions are designed to address this by building an overlay network on top of the main chain to lighten the impact on Layer 1.

3/🔎There are various Layer 2 solutions, but in this thread, we'll focus on rollups. Rollups are a recent development designed to increase Ethereum's scalability by performing off-chain calculations and bundling transactions into a single batch.

4/📈By batching transactions, rollups can achieve a high transaction rate without having to trade off security, making them an attractive solution to Ethereum's scalability challenges.

5/👉There are two types of rollups: ZK rollups and Optimistic rollups. ZK rollups verify the batch of transactions on the Ethereum network, while Optimistic rollups assume the off-chain transactions are valid unless proven otherwise.

6/🔍Let's dive deeper into how ZK rollups work. In a ZK rollup, funds are locked on a smart contract on the Layer 1 blockchain.

The off-chain transactions are verified for correctness, and a cryptographic validity proof is generated to make the batch of transactions final on the Ethereum network.

7/🔏ZK rollups use zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic technique that allows one party to prove to another that they know a piece of information without revealing the information itself. This makes ZK rollups secure, fast, and efficient(eg. @zksync , @loopringorg).

8/👀Optimistic rollups don't use validity proofs. Instead, they assume the off-chain transactions are valid unless proven otherwise. Fraud proofs can be used to challenge the submitted state, and the operator needs to prove the state and transactions are valid(eg. @arbitrum).

9/🔒@zksync is an example of an L2 solution that uses ZK rollups. @zksync is built on top of Ethereum and uses ZK rollups to process transactions quickly and cheaply.

@zksync locks funds on the L1 blockchain and generates a proof of validity for each batch of off-chain transactions, submitted via a SNARK.

10/💡Rollups are a critical scalability component to the inherent network congestion on Ethereum, and could offer a solution to the frequent congestion, slow transactions, and increased gas prices. They're still in development, but their potential to scale Ethereum is exciting.

11/🚀That's it for our thread on rollups! I hope you've gained a better understanding of this promising Layer 2 solution and how it can help scale Ethereum. Stay tuned for more updates on the crypto space!