Author: Zypher Research

The Candy Crush moment for on-chain gaming has arrived.

We are very excited to announce that Zytron Pioneer ------ the Layer 3 network in the form of zk gaming infrastructure on Linea, has entered the pre-mainnet phase. This marks the birth of the first practical zk-driven gaming environment, specifically designed to provide game developers with unparalleled tools and resources to develop decentralized high-performance applications.

We are about to launch:

• Zytron Kit: Cryptographic primitives designed for highly parallel cooperative processing
• Key partnerships: Collaborating to achieve a comprehensive "blockchain" abstraction for Dev-X
• Incentive activities: Experience over 30 "interface-agnostic" games with mining rewards
• Our original intention: To create "truly decentralized ownership," rather than "pseudo-decentralized ownership"

Zytron is designed for native zero Gas and millisecond proof verification, making it faster and cheaper than Ethereum mainnet and L2 on many algorithms through precompilation. A typical example is the native support for EdOnBN254 (BabyJubJub), which accelerates PlonK verification in on-chain ++shuffling++, meeting the gaming demand for high responsiveness.

Zytron Kit Framework

Another Layer 3 network?

Zytron is a highly customizable Layer 3 aggregation stack that natively supports Zypher's gaming blockchain abstraction layer. It is designed for production-level gaming experiences, from autonomous worlds to TG-based hyper-casual games.

Zypher introduces a new paradigm for high-performance on-chain applications, leveraging highly parallel zk co-processing to achieve production-level scalability. Zypher starts with gaming ------ one of the most widely adopted use cases. Zytron Pioneer processes gaming data through a decentralized network of servers and miners, replacing the centralized servers used in traditional gaming and Web 2.5.

Why adopt the form of Layer 3? Blockchain expands to Layer 3 through roll-up frameworks (such as Orbit or OP Stack) to achieve cost-effectiveness, customizable features, lower entry barriers, dedicated block space, and other advantages. Compared to standard roll-up frameworks, Zytron goes beyond optimizations at the smart contract layer, such as zero Gas fees, wallet abstraction, and chain abstraction. It is also equipped with a range of precompiled contracts and cryptographic primitives to support zk-driven gaming, as detailed in our white paper. Most importantly, Zypher's mining program (the core of the Zypher on-chain gaming asset protocol) is nested within Zytron.

For developers, we abstract away the complex mathematics and cryptography in the ZK system, allowing game developers to focus on building games and enabling COCOs / Unity-based frontends to easily deploy using the Zypher SDK. With the Zypher SDK, game developers can build zk games as easily as "forking a Uniswap," thus popularizing composable, verifiable, and fair gameplay for the majority.

Zypher's tech stack is highly modular, consisting of three permissionless components: i) Circuit Market (ZK SDKs), ii) Proof Market, iii) Verification Contracts. Multiple zk proofs are generated in each game to validate the validity of player data. The generation of proofs is outsourced to the proof network to ensure a high-quality gaming experience and standardization through miner incentive mechanisms.

Some Data Analysis

Ethereum was not originally designed around ZK friendliness, so many parts of the Ethereum protocol require significant computation for ZK proofs. ------ Different types of ZK-EVMs

Compared to all L2s, Zytron offers superior ZK processing capabilities: 10 times faster transaction speeds and 200 times lower Gas costs. Precompiled contracts provide advanced functionalities, especially for handling resource-intensive operations (such as elliptic curve computations). Precompiled operations (such as elliptic curve point addition, scalar multiplication, and pairing) are crucial for efficient and secure on-chain zkSNARK verification.

1. Performance optimization: Precompiled contracts are typically highly optimized in the underlying code and tightly integrated with the blockchain itself. This greatly enhances computational capabilities, such as cryptographic operations, making them very suitable for zkSNARK-based applications.
2. Reduced Gas costs: Using precompiled contracts significantly lowers Gas costs. For example, using the native babyjubjub contract to verify a single shuffle (shuffling) revel proof incurs Gas costs of up to 7,629,888 Gas.
3. Increased transaction speed: Ethereum's Gas limit per block is 30 million. Since zkSNARK-based on-chain verification consumes a large amount of Gas, using precompiled contracts can effectively reduce this overhead, allowing more transactions to be processed per block. For instance, using the native babyjubjub contract, a block can only accommodate three revel proofs, while using precompiled contracts allows for more.
4. Development time savings: With precompiled contracts, developers do not need to write complex cryptographic operations or deploy and compile their own contract versions, greatly improving development efficiency.
5. Security: The only precompiled elliptic curve in Ethereum is altbn128, which has a security level of only 100 to 110 bits. Therefore, we can provide a more secure elliptic curve suitable for SNARK.

Zytron Pioneer (Linea Layer 3) and Zero Gas

Zytron Pioneer (Developer Documentation) is the first pre-mainnet environment of Zytron as Linea Layer 3, designed to provide a frictionless and seamless on-chain experience.

• Zero Gas SBT: The real question is ------ why do ordinary players need "gas"? Web2 players are not reminded of the server costs of the game with every click. Every time you ask users to click, you lose half of them. We have embedded a zero Gas module in Zytron, so any player can obtain a zero Gas license (SBT token) through our activities, enjoying a frictionless gaming experience.
• Telegram Interface: In addition to the web, our games also support TMA (Telegram Mini Apps) interface, enhancing user acquisition by combining hyper-casual, sticky gameplay with web3 native financial mechanisms. Native TON integration allows players to log in using their Telegram accounts and manage in-game assets natively with TON wallets.

You can find all network configuration information in our documentation or join our community to learn more.

After the pre-mainnet launch, we will introduce a points system to recognize early adopters and community contributors, along with a series of task-oriented activities highlighting our launch partners, such as Linea and another 10-30 games, with rewards including points, in-game assets, $ETH-backed assets, and more.

Key Launch Partners

Complete blockchain abstraction comes from modularity. Our partners have played a crucial role in building modular infrastructure, making Zytron possible.

Linea

Linea has been a long-term supporter of the Zypher ecosystem: our past game testing on Linea attracted over 1 million participants and generated millions of transactions. We also launched the first game on the first day of Linea's mainnet launch. Details about Zytron Layer 3 activities with Linea will be announced soon.

Risc Zero

We are honored to be the official gaming partner of Risc Zero, fully integrating with Risc Zero's ZKVM, providing game developers with an easy way to build zk games using their preferred programming languages. We look forward to allowing more users to experience casual games running on its ZKVM and Bonsai cloud validators, which is the most practical and lightweight way to achieve zk large-scale applications.

Gevulot

As a beneficiary and long-term partner of Gevulot, we outsource the generation of computation-intensive proofs during the gaming process to Gevulot at no cost. Fast and cost-free proof computation ensures a seamless gaming experience, as smooth as centralized processing.

HyperLane

Hyperlane is an open interoperability framework that connects Zytron Pioneer with 40+ other ecosystems and seamlessly interoperates with EtherSafe, making Zypher's ZK-driven gaming experience more chain-agnostic and achieving full interoperability for autonomous worlds! Supported chains and assets will be listed in our documentation soon.

Third Web

We have integrated our SDK with Thirdweb to make it easy for game developers to get started, such as a full-chain shuffling SDK and trading card game templates. Developers can also easily access standard EVM tools on Zytron, such as Connect SDK and RPC Edge.

Particle Network

Particle is deploying its Waas (Wallet as a Service) on Zytron Pioneer, expanding wallet abstraction and chain abstraction for game developers, allowing one-click registration of smart accounts through social login, simplifying the user experience for game developers.

Celestia

By publishing data on an alternative DA layer, we are reducing the hosting costs of Layer 3 to improve cost-effectiveness and focus on our core products. In addition to transaction data, we also publish and store all ZK proofs generated during the gaming process. Since most supported games do not have centralized servers, publishing data on decentralized DA ensures true decentralization, as any community member can modify the game in their own way.

Renzo

Recently mentioned in the Linea blog, Zypher supports DeFi-level composability for on-chain gaming, enabling seamless integration of DeFi mechanisms (such as re-staking). Zytron has integrated Renzo's ezETH to support liquidity launches, one of the largest assets on Linea.

Eigen Layer

Eigen Layer provides cryptoeconomic security for various on-chain protocols; we have integrated AVS designed for cost-effective proof verification. This offers game developers a universal and efficient proof verification option in addition to Zytron's native precompiled support.