Author: Yue Xiaoyu
Ethereum is being ZK-ized, and ZK provers require hardware acceleration, which is hardware-dependent like Bitcoin mining, so ZK mining may become a new type of PoW.
Ethereum's economic model may eventually become a coexistence of PoS and PoW, forming a new "hybrid consensus" model.
Next, let's take a closer look at the underlying logic of the above assumptions.
The basic principle of ZK (zero-knowledge proof) is that one party can prove to another party that a statement is true without providing any other information.
This is a very promising technology.
ZK technology is currently mainly used for capacity expansion in the blockchain field.
V God has been pushing ZK technology. Due to V God's wishes and inclinations, the Ethereum Foundation has also invested in various ZK projects.
However, the infrastructure layer of the ZK project has a relatively long cycle, so what ordinary users can directly perceive at present is various ZK Rollups, that is, ZK-based Ethereum Layer2 solutions.
Typical representatives are zkSync, Starknet, Polygon zkEVM, Scroll, Linea, etc.
These are all integrated with ZK technology in the execution layer of Ethereum.
And Ethereum itself is gradually becoming ZK-based.
(1) ZK-based consensus layer (such as the Beam Chain proposal): By ZK-ing the verification process of consensus operations, the consensus process can be simplified and accelerated.
(2) ZK-based data layer: Only storing proofs instead of all transaction data can significantly reduce on-chain storage requirements.
Through these methods, Ethereum can significantly improve the performance of its network, including transaction processing speed, cost, and privacy protection, while maintaining its decentralization and security.
The introduction of ZK technology is seen as part of the long-term expansion strategy of the Ethereum ecosystem, which can cope with higher user needs and application complexity.
The above mentioned many advantages of ZK, but the biggest obstacle ZK currently faces is the performance problem of generating ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proofs).
The operating mechanism of ZK is to enable the verifier to merge multiple transactions into a single, concise proof, and then submit the transaction to the main network, which ultimately achieves the expansion of the main network.
However, ZK also has limitations, because the process of generating proofs is very resource-intensive in terms of time and energy.
The creation of proofs is usually slowed down by the need for many complex mathematical operations, such as power operations, inverse operations, and bilinear pairing calculations.
Software optimization alone cannot further improve performance, so it is necessary to combine hardware. By using dedicated hardware for acceleration, the speed of proof generation can be increased from the original hour level to the second level, which will be a huge improvement.
Therefore, ZK is hardware-dependent and requires dedicated chips.
As the application of ZKP technology in privacy computing, blockchain expansion and other fields gradually increases, the generation speed and efficiency of ZKP have become bottlenecks, and the market demand for hardware has become increasingly strong.
If ZK hardware acceleration is adopted, hardware mining can be realized, which will lead to a new economic model.
Traditional PoW (proof of work) mining relies on solving complex mathematical problems, while ZK hardware mining is the ability to quickly generate ZKP.
Similar to PoW mining, participants can compete for the speed and efficiency of generating ZKP, and the participant who first generates a valid proof will be rewarded.
In the PoS system, validators (i.e., stakers) are responsible for verifying transactions and proposing new blocks. ZK proofs can be used to prove the correctness of a block or a series of transactions, enhancing security and reducing verification costs.
While performing their PoS duties, validators generate ZKP as an additional proof of their work. Validators who successfully generate and submit valid ZKPs can receive additional rewards on top of existing block rewards.
This can be ETH or some form of reward internal to the network (such as a specific token or a portion of the Gas fee).
The mainnet block reward can be divided into two parts, forming a tiered reward system: one part of the reward is used for traditional PoS validation, and the other part is allocated based on the node's contribution in ZK proof generation.
From this, we can see that ZK can be used as an enhancement to PoS validation, and ZK mining can be used as an extension of PoS staking.
In addition to staking ETH to obtain PoS rewards, stakers can also receive additional rewards by participating in ZK-related work. For example, stakers can run ZK proof generation nodes and provide computing resources to support the application of ZK technology.
However, this is just a possibility. If ZK technology is to be integrated into Ethereum's existing PoS mechanism, the current PoS protocol needs to be modified or expanded to accommodate the role of ZK proof.
And a fair incentive model must be designed to ensure that the incentive effect of PoS is not weakened and the application of ZK technology is promoted.
After Ethereum switched from PoW to PoS, the most criticized point was that no externalities were introduced into this "closed" economic system.
PoW has externalities and requires energy and hardware, thereby expanding the economic activities of blockchain to the outside of blockchain and affecting the real world.
In the PoS system, the qualification to verify a block is mainly based on the number of tokens held (i.e., pledged), and economic activities are more concentrated on pledges and transactions within the network, rather than involving a wide range of external industries such as mining machine production and electricity markets as in PoW.
ZK acceleration hardware, like PoW mining machines, requires dedicated hardware, but the problem of "ineffective power consumption" will be reduced, because PoW is to solve mathematical problems to compete for the right to produce blocks, while ZK mining is to generate valid proofs to verify transactions, without the need for different nodes to do repetitive and ineffective work.
Furthermore, there will be a ZK computing power market, and even AI computing power and ZK computing power sharing can be achieved.
There may be an integrated platform on the market that provides comprehensive computing services to support the computing needs of AI and ZK tasks.
Users can process AI tasks that require high-performance computing and tasks that require ZK proof generation on the same platform.
Integration can also be done at the protocol level: create smart contracts or protocols so that AI computing power providers can also participate in the generation of ZK proofs, or use ZK technology to verify the results of AI calculations.
Computing power can also be dynamically allocated: dynamically allocate computing power resources according to task requirements. For example, when AI task requirements are low, these resources can be used to generate ZK proofs, and vice versa.
Cysic is currently the top project in the ZK hardware acceleration track.
Cysic focuses on designing and producing application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and GPU acceleration solutions to accelerate the ZKP generation process.
Cysic has designed two hardware products:
(1) ZK Air: A lightweight ZK device that is close in size to a laptop power adapter and has computing power equivalent to 10 RTX 4090 GPUs, suitable for individual users.
(2) ZK Pro: A more powerful device with performance equivalent to 50 RTX 4090 GPUs, designed for large ZK projects such as zkRollup and zkML.
In addition to hardware, Cysic also provides a set of CUDA libraries that support a variety of ZKP systems such as Plonky2, Gnark, Halo2, RapidSnark, etc. These libraries can significantly improve performance, at least 50% compared to open source frameworks.
At the same time, Cysic has an ecosystem, Cysic Network, which is mainly used to integrate and manage community computing resources, connect ZK project parties, computing power providers and community validators, and form a reliable computing power network.
In short, Cysic Network is a ZK mining pool and SaaS platform.
Currently, Cysic has cooperated with multiple zkRollup projects to demonstrate the practicality and market demand of its products.
In addition to Cysic, there is another very distinctive project to mention: Scroll
Unexpectedly, the "abandoned by everyone" and "notorious" Scroll is very advanced in ZK hardware acceleration.
Compared with other ZK Rollup projects, Scroll can be said to have taken a different approach, starting with hardware, and forming its own competitive barrier by developing a dedicated ZK acceleration hardware GUP, which is also Scroll's biggest differentiated competitive advantage.
Just looking at this point, Scroll is indeed a very hardcore project.
However, Scroll and Cysic have different positioning: for Scroll, hardware acceleration is part of its Layer2 overall solution; while Cysic is committed to providing hardware acceleration services for the entire ZKP ecosystem.
Finally, let’s summarize the contents of this article:
(1) Ethereum is becoming ZK-based: Ethereum has introduced zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology to achieve capacity expansion and improve privacy. ZK technology has been applied in the consensus layer and data layer to improve network performance.
(2) ZK requires hardware acceleration: Since generating zero-knowledge proofs consumes a lot of computing resources, hardware acceleration (such as ASIC, FPGA) is considered a necessary means to improve efficiency.
(3) Combination of PoS and ZK mining: A new economic model is proposed, which regards ZK mining as an extension of PoS. Pledgers receive additional rewards by providing ZK computing power, forming a model where PoS and PoW coexist.
(4) ZK mining introduces new positive externalities: Compared with PoW, ZK mining may reduce ineffective energy consumption, but it still requires dedicated hardware, which will bring incentives for hardware production and technological innovation.
(5) AI and ZK computing power sharing: AI and ZK computing tasks may share hardware resources, forming a comprehensive computing service market.
(6) Market-leading projects: Cysic and Scroll are leaders in the field of ZK hardware acceleration. The former focuses on providing hardware for the ZK ecosystem, and the latter uses it as part of the Layer2 solution.
Finally, the ZK hardware acceleration track has begun to emerge. With the further ZKization of Ethereum, ZK hardware acceleration will become more important and may even reversely change the economic model of Ethereum. It is worth our continued attention to this track.
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