ConsenSys, a top software firm working on the Ethereum blockchain, is rolling out a zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) public testnet on March 28, intensifying the race among top crypto firms to be first to go fully live with the fast-emerging technology.
The move for ConsenSys comes after the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based software firm in December launched its private beta zkEVM testnet. Since then, the private testnet has processed over 350,000 transactions.
Zero-knowledge (ZK) is a type of technology that uses cryptography to help increase the speed of transactions and to reduce gas fees on blockchains. Multiple companies are rushing to bring the innovation to the Ethereum ecosystem, seen by industry observers as likely to be one of this year’s hottest blockchain trends.
The race for the first ZK rollup to go live has accelerated recently. Later this month, Polygon will go live with its mainnet beta zkEVM. Scroll and Matter Labs have also announced they’re coming out with ZK rollups, but haven’t set dates.
“It’s not crowded enough,” said Nicolas Liochon, the head of R&D at ConsenSys and lead for the ZK Business Group. “We think that it’s important to have multiple zkEVMs, and we want to be one of them.”
ZkEVMs are a type of scaling system, also known as a zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup, which aims to process transactions faster on a layer 2 chain atop the main blockchain, and then send the data back to the layer 1. ZK rollups use “proofs” to prove that a transaction is valid and was not tampered with, by only showing a small piece of data from that transaction.
ConsenSys has not set a date for when their zkEVM will move out of the testnet phase, but Liochon said it should happen by the end of 2023.
