ZK Validator: A Review of the Zero-Knowledge Proof Field in 2022
2022 was a breakthrough year for zero-knowledge proofs, and ZK technology is transitioning from research to the blockchain industry and other areas of the real world. We believe this is the beginning of greater possibilities.Original: 《ZK Rewind: The Year in Recap》
Author: Zero Knowledge Validator
Translation: Scroll Chinese Community
We reviewed the biggest highlights of the ZK industry in 2022.
As 2022 comes to a close, we wanted to compile a report on the progress in the field of zero-knowledge technology. It has been a busy year for the entire industry, but we can confidently say that 2022 was a breakthrough year for zero-knowledge proofs.
We will cover the following sections:
Public Interest
According to Google Trends data, interest in searching for "zero-knowledge proofs" surged in 2022, maintaining an upward trend even during the harsh bear market in the second half of the year.
Diving deeper into the data, the keyword "SNARKs" had a monthly search volume globally between 100,000 and 1,000,000, representing a 900% year-on-year increase.
Moreover, major blockchain-focused media outlets like Decrypt and Coindesk seemed to show more interest in the zero-knowledge space in 2022. For Decrypt, the number of articles containing the term "zero-knowledge proof" jumped from 18 in 2021 to a total of 60 in 2022. Coindesk was no exception, writing 81 articles related to zero-knowledge proofs in 2022, an increase of 54 articles compared to 2021.
Financing
Investors also jumped on the ZK bandwagon. This year, we calculated that at least over $725 million was allocated to "pure zero-knowledge" participants. This includes Aleo, Aztec, Scroll, RiscZero, Matter Labs, Elusiv, and Mina Protocol. The two largest funding rounds were Aleo and Matter Labs, each raising $200 million, followed by Aztec's $100 million funding.
In addition to private equity financing, some foundations have also committed funds to promote the development of zero-knowledge applications within their respective ecosystems. Polkadot launched the Pioneers Prize program, rewarding 993,286 DOT, with a special focus on zero-knowledge technology. Additionally, the NEAR Foundation initiated a funding program to support ZK projects following the Tornado Cash incident.
Meanwhile, alliances of zero-knowledge project teams and organizations (such as ZKV) initiated the ZPrize program, with a prize pool of up to $7 million. These competitions aim to drive the development of ZK technology in various areas, including the performance of key general algorithms, the availability of libraries, and diversity.
This year, Gitcoin ZK Side Rounds had three rounds, with a total matching prize pool of $466,000. Across all rounds, different public goods projects raised nearly $1 million. These Side Rounds primarily focused on usability tools and creating new applications to bring users into the ZK space. Several teams participated in this initiative, including ZKV, 0xParc, Gnosis, Anoma, Penumbra, Mina, Geometry, Aztec, and others.
The Year of zk(E)VM
Despite many breakthroughs in 2022, the buzzword of the year may be zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVM) and zero-knowledge Ethereum virtual machines (zkEVM). Many projects are building various implementations based on this, as they are seen as highly viable scalability solutions for the Ethereum blockchain.
This past summer, during the EthCC event in Paris, various teams made numerous announcements regarding these solutions.
At that event, Polygon launched their zkEVM. Polygon's zkEVM differs from traditional zk rollups, aiming for compatibility at the opcode level with the Ethereum virtual machine, providing faster and cheaper transactions. After its announcement in July, it underwent multiple updates, with the latest news being that the final version of the public testnet before the mainnet launch was released on December 21.
On the other hand, zkSync also announced at EthCC that they would push their zkVM, zkSync 2.0, to the mainnet in October. Although they ultimately released a very streamlined version (Baby Alpha), zkSync 2.0 will offer some major differentiators, such as account abstraction, support for Solidity and Vyper, and the LLVM compiler.
More players have emerged as well. One of the most notable announcements was that RiscZero built a "general zero-knowledge virtual machine." Additionally, Scroll, which is building a zkRollup based on zkEVM on Ethereum, launched a Pre-Alpha testnet with demonstration features (also announced during EthCC!).
Testnets Getting Faster
As zero-knowledge technology spreads in the blockchain industry, three promising participants have taken significant steps toward their mainnets.
In the last quarter of this year, Aleo made significant improvements and launched their Testnet 3, which is divided into three phases. This version allows developers to start writing, deploying, and executing Aleo programs on the network. Additionally, it introduced a new consensus algorithm, AleoBFT, which combines the PoS consensus algorithm (based on DiemBFT) with a PoW prover incentive scheme.
Another participant making progress on their testnet is Namada, a branch instance of Anoma that brings privacy assets into the Cosmos ecosystem. They ran a privacy testnet, where ZKV was part of the validators, and launched their first public testnet on December 20.
Last but not least, we have been closely following the development of Penumbra, a decentralized exchange (DEX) with privacy features in Cosmos. Throughout 2022, Penumbra adhered to a rapid release philosophy, launching 35 versions of its public testnet. In the process, the team introduced significant improvements, such as a novel hierarchical commitment tree, a type of Merkle tree that can accelerate Penumbra by 4,000 times, as well as their zero-knowledge proof-friendly instance of the Poseidon hash for the Penumbra system, Poseidon377.
ZK Cross-Chain Bridges
Although still in very early stages, some projects have made progress in the ZK space. We are referring to ZK cross-chain bridges—trustless cross-chain bridging solutions. They aim to replace other bridge architectures, which were one of the major security issues in 2022.
In October 2022, Succinct launched the first demonstration. This version bridged Goerli (Ethereum testnet) and Gnosis chain, allowing users to deposit "Succinct tokens" (the ERC-20 tokens they created) into the Goerli deposit contract and receive minted Succinct tokens on the Gnosis chain. Similarly, in October, zkBridge published a paper on their solution built at Stanford.
Another novel concept along this line is the birth of zkIBC. This solution aims to bring Cosmos's signature cross-chain communication protocol (IBC) to Ethereum using zero-knowledge proofs. Broadly, they build a minimally trusted, interoperable messaging protocol based on zk-snark proofs verifying the state of light clients on Ethereum.
New Languages
Two new languages were unveiled in zero-knowledge projects. At the beginning of 2022, Aleo launched LEO; a statically typed programming language inspired by Rust, specifically built for writing privacy applications. Meanwhile, in October, Aztec released their Noir language. Noir is a Rust-based domain-specific language (DSL) for creating and verifying zero-knowledge proofs.
Trusted Setup Ceremonies (TSC) are also part of the end-of-year narrative. For newcomers, TSC is a process where a group of participants collaborates to generate a set of cryptographic parameters that must be used every time certain cryptographic protocols are run. Projects that conducted TSC include Namada and Manta. The former had a total of 2,510 participants in the ceremony, while the latter had over 3,559 contributors involved in the process. It is said that the Ethereum Foundation also plans to conduct a trusted setup in early 2023.
From Applications to zkApps
In mid-November, Mina Protocol launched a program aimed at promoting the development of so-called zkApps, which are smart contracts that allow developers to leverage Mina's zero-knowledge technology. This marks an important milestone in the ZK space, as it could unleash a wave of innovation and use cases using zero-knowledge, and may attract some of the over 83,000 Typescript developers due to the SnarkyJS library for building zkApps.
Growing Community
With the increase in adoption of zero-knowledge proofs, the number of people interested in this technology has surged. ZK Hack and zkSummit are two flagship events in the community, gathering over 2,500 people at both events. A highlight of these events is the gathering of multiple ecosystem projects and the opportunity for newcomers to engage with important projects.
Research is Important
It is a misconception to think that zero-knowledge is limited to the blockchain industry. General research is on the rise. The academic community has published a large number of papers on the subject. According to Google Scholar statistics, in 2022 alone, zero-knowledge research published 67,100 articles, an increase of 2,000 articles compared to 2021. However, the number of papers in this area has significantly declined since 2018.
Conclusion
Our annual summary concludes here! While much of the narrative over the past year has revolved around scalability, we hope to see a wave of privacy-centric protocols using zero-knowledge in the coming months.
2022 was a breakthrough year for zero-knowledge proofs, as ZK technology moves from research into the blockchain industry and other real-world applications. We believe this is the beginning of greater possibilities.
