The Snarling Zk-SNARKs Of Metropolis
Scalability. The nagging knot in Vitalik’s vitals and the encumbrance that drains his vitality. If Blockchain is to rival traditional payment services in processing capacity, scalability is the towering obstruction to conquer.
As of recent, Ripple cartwheeled a surprising resurgence into number two spot, gracefully unseating Ethereum by market cap. Responsible for XRP’s beautiful long green candlestick is their xRapid platform. Built for enterprise use, it boasts of a capacity to handle cross-border money transactions, offering an efficient solution for major banks and payment service providers of fast processing speed, low cost, and yup you guessed it, scalability.
But not all is lost for the Ethereum network and the many DApps that run on it as it is still under the able care and guidance of the Russian-Canadian polymath. However, emanating from within the ecosystems built on top of the platform is the constant growing frustration over scalability that towers over the developers of the Ethereum Foundation. Afri Schoedon, Parity Technologies Communication Officer, expressed in his September 20th tweet:
Please stop deploying d-apps to Ethereum. We are running at capacity.
In a timely yet expected reply of disagreement, Vitalik takes latitude to invalidate the wild exuberance of the claim, suggesting to forgo any absurd notions of an imploding blockchain, to which he justified by briefly explaining of a simpler solution to the issue at hand. While proven to be infallible as a solutionist, we may, however, face an indefinite deprivation of the Buterin brilliance based on his acrid evaluation of the culture, direction, and decadence of the current state of cryptocurrencies. Yes, Vitalik has warned of abandoning his post. I can almost hear him utter the lines:
“..And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.” — Ezekiel 25:17 (Pulp Fiction Version)
But fear not. Provided that we, dear sirs et Mesdames conduct ourselves appropriately in the crypto space, we can be confident of receiving Vitalik’s gift of sapience and his solution to scalability.
No, it’s not Frankincense nor Myrrh, its called zk-SNARKs.
Zk-SNARKs
The underlying technology in zCash and the new kung-fu of Ethereum.
“Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge” the length of it alone is otherworldly. Bitcoin has seven letters and life used to be so simple.
Zero-Knowledge Protocols, however, has been around since the youthful vigour of the revolutionary Cypherpunks. Conceptualised in 1985 by three brilliant MIT researchers: Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, and Charles Rackoff, the concept tackles the intricacies and issues of interactive proof systems, where a transaction between a prover and a verifier is accurately processed to be either factual or otherwise, without revealing any information between the two parties which have no interaction between them whatsoever. Old as it is, Zero-Knowledge Proofs and its oxymoronic function is the savvy new sorcery in cryptography.
There are three properties that a Zero-Knowledge Protocol must comply with:
- Completeness: A somewhat “perfect world scenario” where if a given statement is factual, then the honest verifier will be convinced of such truth by the honest prover.
- Soundness: if the statement is untrue, the dishonest prover cannot convince the honest verifier that the statement is valid.
- Zero-knowledge: if the statement is true, the verifier is obscured from any information other than that the statement is factual.
In the above-mentioned criteria, however, lies a fundamental flaw that has since been addressed within its variant, zk-SNARKs. In the early version of Zero-Knowledge protocols, the system structure relies on an interactive process which means both prover and verifier must be available at the same time for a transaction to be successfully processed.
This led to the formulation of the Fiat–Shamir heuristic in 1986, in which the issues of an interactive process is addressed by introducing a digital signature that allows non-interactiveness within zero-knowledge proof processes — the foundation in which zk-SNARKs are built upon.
Succinctness
“Succinct” may probably be the more interesting, if not the essential component of the zk-SNARKs acronym. It denotes that since the size of the message or proof-length is small compared to that of the actual computation, the speed of processing transactions is then greatly improved.
Vitalik Buterin told Fortune:
Personally, I think zk-SNARKs are a hugely important, absolutely game-changing technology… they are the single most under-hyped thing in cryptography right now.
which led to his proposal to implement the technology behind the zCash network as an on-chain scaling solution for Ethereum:
We can actually scale asset transfer transactions on ethereum by a huge amount, without using layer 2’s that introduce liveness assumptions (eg. channels, plasma), by using ZK-SNARKs to mass-validate transactions. Here is how we do it.
There are two classes of user: (i) transactor, and (ii) relayer. A relayer takes a set of operations from transactors, and combines them all into a transaction and makes a ZK-SNARK to prove the validity, and publishes the ZK-SNARK and the transaction data in a highly compressed form to the blockchain. A relayer gets rewarded for this by transaction fees from transactors.
The novel approach of using zk-SNARKs will facilitate high throughput rate of transactions whilst preserving Ethereum’s core values of a decentralised network. The bold initiative has garnered much attention and excitement from blockchain enthusiasts. One notable personality is Edward Snowden, former CIA employee and NSA’s favourite whistleblower, expressed his concordance with the blockchain wunderkind:
For the many that speak the language, Vitalik delves on the arcane space math behind zk-SNARKs in a technical three-part article. There he discusses on quadratic arithmetic programs, elliptic curve pairings to Pinocchio protocols; providing an in-depth investigative look into the tech integration, which equates to an entirely different aspect in blockchain power and resilience through zk-SNARKs– the main feature in Ethereum’s Metropolis phase.
But in case any of this isn’t astounding enough, Vitalik joins an alliance with a remnant of the old cryptographic rebellion, a Cypherpunk, who also happens to be zCash’s bigshot CEO, Bryce “Zooko” Wilcox.
The collaboration envisions Project Alchemy. An ambitious endeavour that will bridge both zCash and Ethereum platforms, where its integration will allow for both technologies to establish a decentralised exchange. In the heart of the joint effort is a cross-chain Order, its basic concept is to facilitate a decentralised order execution.
An outline of the concept as stated in the ZCash article:
Sellers will be able to publish an Ethereum contract called an Order, and anyone can fulfill it by sending out an appropriately formatted Zcash transaction. The funds the initiator wants to exchange will be essentially held in escrow by the smart contract while they wait for a buyer to match them. A buyer will be able to create a Zcash transaction that may contain the destination address, and the validity of this transaction will be verified by the Ethereum contract before the funds are released to complete the trade.
As Ethereum braves the frontier of blockchain technology, along with the aid and wisdom of the old cryptographic precepts that oversee zCash, the collaboration of these technologies paves the way in re-defining our perception of “power”. What was once understood to be achieved only through ruthless, cut-throat competition and fierce rivalry is now forged and fortified in symbiosis within a shared economy.
In Metropolis, where the brilliance of Vitalik’s team is in full display, Ethereum ploughs through the impedance of scalability. From the zk-SNARKs integration, the “difficulty bomb” on POW, the ZCash-on-Ethereum (ZoE) initiative, to Project Alchemy.
Vitalik has shown remarkable resilience in resisting to sacrifice his vision of a decentralised future in exchange for mass adoption through a scalable, yet otherwise centralised blockchain. Uncompromised, The Ethereum spirit triumphs over adversity and remain champions of decentralised blockchain technology.
Sometimes, it takes a physically fragile frame to walk the difficult path of the righteous, one where many of us dare not tread.
