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Ethereum scaling solution StarkWare announces token launch (www.blockcast.cc)

StarkWare, an Ethereum scaling solution that uses cryptographic proofs called Starks to help scale the blockchain, has launched a native governance token, details shared on Wednesday show. The startup says the token, dubbed “StarkNet Token”, is a critical step in the platform’s decentralization following its mainnet launch on Ethereum in November 2021. Are you looking […]

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Take a full look at the progress of StarkWare and its L2 application performance: dYdX, DiversiFi, Immmutable X and Sorare (www.blockcast.cc)

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dYdX dialogue StarkWare: How to build a derivative DEX on Ethereum Layer 2? (www.blockcast.cc)

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A quick look at StarkWare’s L2 AMM liquidity aggregation solution Caspian (www.blockcast.cc)

The term Caspian comes from the world’s largest lake “Caspian Sea”. Just like the Caspian Sea, Caspian AMM allows users to bridge liquidity on L2, while also keeping L1 liquidity from becoming fragmented.

Written by: Donnager

Many Ethereum Layer 2 networks will be officially launched in the second half of the year, and multiple L2 networks will fragment the liquidity that was originally aggregated, which is a problem that will be faced sooner or later.

Especially for automatic market makers (AMM), there is a relatively obvious fund accumulation effect, and a larger amount of funds can provide a better trading experience. Even DEX such as DODO, Bancor, and Uniswap V3 are already trying new AMM solutions to improve capital utilization, but the problem of liquidity fragmentation will still exist.

StarkWare, a zero-knowledge proof technology research organization, proposed Caspian, an AMM program driven by Layer 2 networks, to try to solve the problem of liquidity fragmentation and improve capital efficiency. When StarkEx 3.0 goes live in June, Caspian as a conceptual solution has the possibility of landing.

The source of the term Caspian is the “Caspian Sea”, which is the largest lake in the world. The StarkWare team said, “Just like the Caspian Sea, Caspian AMM allows users to bridge liquidity on L2, while also keeping L1 liquidity from becoming fragmented.化。”

So in simple terms, what Caspian wants to achieve is to maintain liquidity in the L1 network, but to implement transactions by L2, which is even a bit like the “in-situ expansion” solution proposed by Celer’s Layer2.Finance.

Principle: internal matchmaking + batch transaction

The essence of Caspian is equivalent to first internally matching L2 transactions, and handing over the remaining unmatched parts to L1’s AMM for processing.

Therefore, Caspian needs an off-chain operator (Operator), which will process transactions in L2 in batches, and each batch needs to process multiple transactions. It needs to imitate the logic of a smart contract. When a batch of transactions starts to end, it needs to provide quotes based on these status changes.

When a certain batch of transactions ends, the operator executes the AMM contract on L2 with a net balance to settle this batch of transactions. Among them, the core technology of StarkWare is involved in the settlement of each batch of transactions, a STARK zero-knowledge certificate needs to be submitted.

A quick look at StarkWare's L2 AMM liquidity aggregation solution Caspian

For example, Alice and Bob both submit their own transaction requirements in the Caspian solution, and the operator will first aggregate the two transactions, and then interact the net difference with the L2-driven AMM smart contract.

Does the operator have a centralization risk?

As the only entity interacting with L1, the operator has a lot of power, and it can even filter out the needs of some transactions and conduct transaction review.

So StarkWare stated that in order to eliminate the centralization risk of operators, the role of Operator can be decentralized, but the specific mechanism has not been made public, and perhaps the team has not yet explored these overly detailed parts.

However, there is still a problem, that is, how does the Operator sort the transactions fairly. For these transaction-related needs, the transaction sequence is also a part that may be attacked or exploited. Therefore, it may also adopt a auction mechanism similar to L1 or other more. Fair mechanism.

Prerequisite for Caspian: StarkEx 3.0

To be able to implement Caspian in engineering, the StarkWare team assessed that it would be possible at least after StarkEx 3.0 went live in June.

Because Caspian needs to be based on two brand new components included in StarkEx 3.0: L1 Limit Orders and Batch-Long Flash Loans. The L1 limit order function has been described in detail in the article DeFi Pooling by StarkWare .

The batch lightning loan function is a lightning loan that is not limited to a single transaction. It can last for a period of time and provides operators with the ability to mint tokens in L2, as long as these tokens are destroyed before the end of the batch— —This is similar to ordinary lightning loans. The purpose of establishing this mechanism is to improve the efficiency of operators. It can combine multiple limit orders into a single limit order.

As a conceptual solution, Caspian still has many missing details, such as how the Operator is decentralized (consensus), how transactions are sorted, which L2 and AMM protocols are aggregated, and the missing technical components (StarkEx 3.0), but this is a It is worth continuing to pay attention to the direction, because the problem of liquidity fragmentation may be a major challenge that multiple L2 networks will face after they go online.

Disclaimer: As a blockchain information platform, the articles published on this site only represent the author’s personal views, and have nothing to do with the position of ChainNews. The information, opinions, etc. in the article are for reference only, and are not intended as or regarded as actual investment advice.

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Ethereum’s second-tier expansion battle: who can break through ZKSync, Loopring, Optimism and StarkWare? (www.blockcast.cc)

Issuing tokens may become the biggest bargaining chip in this war.

Original title: “The Way of DeFi | Ethereum Layer 2 will fight back. Who can stand out? 》
Author: Free and easy

Soldiers are also tricky, so they can show what they can’t, they show what they can’t, they show what they don’t use, they show far when they are close, and they show near when they are far-“Sun Tzu’s Art of War · Tactics”

The ancients put forward some tips for winning wars with great wisdom, and these tips are also applicable to today’s encrypted network wars.

Recently, the Ethereum network has been congested, and the fees charged by miners have also risen. Users are miserable. However, the Layer 2 solution, known as the hope of expansion, has failed to help solve the congestion problem. For a while, competing chains (such as BSC, Heco) are waiting for opportunities. They are all based on replication, supplemented by cheap handling fees to attract new users, and this simple and rude strategy has indeed played a very obvious role. Effect. And now, people are beginning to worry about whether the expansion methods of Ethereum can work, and worry about whether they are just some visible but intangible fog pieces.

The author tried to tell everyone through this article that this kind of worry is superfluous. Ethereum’s Layer 2 solution is beginning to exert its strength, and their success means that it will have an impact on the competitive chain.

The Way of DeFi | Ethereum Layer 2 is about to fight back. Who can stand out?

What is the real Ethereum Layer 2?

Before entering the text, let us figure out a concept, what is Layer 2 of Ethereum?

In the current market, there are too many projects claiming to be Layer 2 of Ethereum, but in essence, they are in a competitive relationship with the Ethereum network. What is the real Ethereum Layer 2?

Simply put, they are an expanded network that migrates computing and data storage to the sub-chain, and transfers settlement to the Ethereum main network for processing. The former and the latter are in a symbiotic relationship.

The most promising Ethereum Layer 2 expansion solution is Rollup (mainly divided into Optimistic Rollup and ZK Rollup). Several Rollup projects frequently mentioned by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, including ZKSync (Matter Labs), Loopring, Optimism , StarkWare (StarkNet) and Offchain Labs.

In theory, these solutions can expand TPS to thousands of levels under the current Ethereum mainnet, while trying not to sacrifice decentralization and security properties, and thus are hailed as the best expansion solutions. Note: Even if Ethereum 2.0 is successfully implemented, these Layer 2 networks have great significance.

Now, let’s learn about the upcoming Ethereum Layer 2 fried chicken one by one.

Option 1: ZKSync (Matter Labs)

ZKSync (Matter Labs) has attracted a lot of attention recently. One of the reasons is that it has just completed its Series A financing. The lead investor is United Square Ventures (USV). Matter Labs’ previous investors Placeholder, 1kx and Dragonfly continue to participate. In addition to this round of financing, the project party also announced a number of major ecological partners, including Aave, Balancer, 1inch, Curve, Binance, Coinbase Ventures, Huobi, Loopring, Argent, MYKEY, imToken, Flexa, MoonPay, ripio, CoinGecko. According to people familiar with the matter, the valuation of this round of financing ZKSync is 120 million U.S. dollars, and the financing is enough to burn Ethereum 2.0 online.

The Way of DeFi | Ethereum Layer 2 is about to fight back. Who can stand out?

What ZKSync wants to challenge is the ultimate solution for Layer 2 expansion-ZK Rollup that supports general smart contracts. This is a very difficult task. The project team mentioned in its latest blog post:

“PLONK’s recursion and custom gate are the key elements that make almost complete compatibility possible. Our benchmark shows that the cost of the prover part is still insignificant compared to the gas part on the chain. We will release more technical details separately. Smart on zkSync The contract’s public testnet will be available in a few months.”

From the perspective of solutions, teams, and ecology, ZKSync (Matter Labs) can be regarded as a heavyweight player in the Ethereum Layer 2 track. We might as well try some simple interactions with the protocol (there may be airdrops) ), currently ZKSync supports a very single function, the only interactive operations are deposits, transfers, withdrawals, and Cruve interaction on the Rinkeby testnet.

Visit ” https://zksync.io/ “, and then connect to your own wallet to interact with ZKSync deposit, transfer and withdrawal operations. At present, deposits and withdrawals involve an Ethereum main network transaction, based on the current network 105 gwei Gas fee calculation, the cost of a deposit is about 14.7 US dollars, and the cost of a transfer is 0.0000871 ETH (about 0.13 US dollars).

To experience the zksync version of Cruve on the Rinkeby testnet, you need to switch to the Rinkeby testnet, and then visit https://zksync.curve.fi/ . Note that to test the application, you need to apply for some test coins, and other steps are related to the Ethereum mainnet. The Cruve makes no difference.

Option 2: Optimism

Optimism is another very noteworthy Ethereum Layer 2 seed project. It announced on February 24 that it had completed a US$25 million round of A round of financing. The investor is the well-known VC Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Paradigm and IDEO raised USD 3.5 million in seed rounds.

Optimism may be the most closely watched Ethereum Layer 2 expansion project in the near future. The reason is that the Optimistic Rollup scheme it adopts is easier to support general-purpose smart contracts. In other words, some current popular DeFi projects can achieve Layer 2 faster. According to Vitalik et al., Optimism’s main network may be launched in March, and Synthetix will be able to complete the migration by then, and related transactions can greatly reduce processing costs.

The Way of DeFi | Ethereum Layer 2 is about to fight back. Who can stand out?

According to official data, the Synthetix demo transaction fee can be optimized by 143 times, the transaction confirmation time is 0.3 seconds, and the Uniswap demo (Unipig) transaction fee can be optimized by 10-100 times, and the transaction confirmation time is about 0.169 seconds.

In general, Optimism, as an Ethereum expansion solution, inherits the security, composability and developer’s moat of the Ethereum main network, while improving performance, and does not impose any cost or trust requirements on Ethereum users. Substantial impact.

At present, a problem with Optimism is that withdrawing funds to the Ethereum mainnet will have a long challenge period (previously it was calculated on a weekly basis), which is not good for the user experience, but as market makers step in And to provide faster delisting services (simple and quick withdrawal program), this worry may become unnecessary.

Option 3: Loopring

Loopring is the first Ethereum Layer 2 project to adopt the ZK Rollup expansion solution. Its current achievements are obvious to all. According to data from duneanalytics, the current value of assets locked in the Loopring Layer 2 network is close to US$210 million, more than half of which The assets of ETH are blue chip assets such as ETH, USDT, and WBTC.

Recently, the daily trading volume of Loopring DEX is approximately between US$8 million and US$30 million, of which AMM type transactions far exceed order book type transactions.

The Way of DeFi | Ethereum Layer 2 is about to fight back. Who can stand out?

If the current user wants to use the Loopring product, the handling fee for recharging a fund is about 0.01575 ETH (approximately USD 24.4), while the transfer fee is fixed at 0.000096 ETH (approximately USD 0.144). In terms of handling fees, Loopring and The difference between zksync does not seem to be very big. If you want to experience the AMM type of Rollup two-layer network transaction in advance, Loopring is already a relatively feasible choice.

But if you are rushing to airdrop candy, then you may be disappointed, because Loopring has already issued tokens, and most of the tokens are already in circulation in the market.

So how did Loopring go from 0 to 1, attracting more than 200 million US dollars of funds into its Layer 2 network?

The answer is liquidity mining. Loopring officially provides LRC token subsidies for the main asset pair to attract users to transfer funds to the second-tier AMM pool. When the liquidity is sufficient, the project party does not need to provide incentives. .

Then we can imagine that those Rollup two-layer networks that have not yet issued tokens, if they also use this method to distribute their tokens, what will it be like?

Option 4: StarkWare (StarkNet)

StarkWare is currently another Ethereum Layer 2 expansion project that cannot be ignored. It received 6 million US dollars in financing from Bitmain and other institutions and Vitalik Buterin at an early stage, and then received 30 million US dollars in financing led by Paradigm. Other well-known investors include Intel Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, etc. In February 2020, StarkWare received another US$40 million strategic round of investment. The investors are Intel Capital and Sequoia Capital.

In addition to the support of the well-known gold master’s father, the well-known derivatives agreement dYdX has announced the selection of StarkWare’s StarkEx as the second-tier expansion engine. It can be deployed as either the ZK-Rollup solution or the Validium expansion solution. The advantage of the latter is that it can be changed. Good scalability, but the compromise is to improve the trust assumption, so the security is not as good as the Rollup solution.

According to the StarkNet roadmap announced by StarkWare at the end of January this year, StarkWare’s second-tier expansion plan will be divided into 4 phases. At present, the basic construction of phase 0 has been completed. The subsequent phases 1 to 3 are codenamed planets, Constellation and universe, they correspond to single operation single application Rollup, single operation multiple application Rollup, and decentralized operation multiple application Rollup.

The Way of DeFi | Ethereum Layer 2 will fight back, who can stand out?

According to the plan, Phase 1 of StarkNet will be completed within a few months, and it is expected that Phase 2 and Phase 3 will be implemented before the end of the year.

summary

Beginning in March, a war on the expansion of Ethereum Layer 2 will officially kick off. At present, related seed projects have completed financing, and a number of well-known Ethereum ecological projects have been attracted.

The issuance of tokens has long become the biggest bargaining chip in this war. Loopring has demonstrated the attractiveness of liquidity mining on the second-tier network, such as ZKSync (Matter Labs), Optimism, StarkWare (StarkNet) and Offchain Labs. For projects that have not yet issued tokens, once the token issuance plan is officially announced, it will inevitably trigger an influx of users and funds. By then, the battlefield of Defi will be completed.

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Ethereum Layer 2 Ecological Update: New Rollup Challengers Enter, Competition and Cooperation between Aztec and StarkWare (www.blockcast.cc)

This issue of the Ethereum Layer 2 ecological report will focus on StarkWare’s launch of StarkNet, and Aztec’s launch of Rollup-specific software protocols and cross-Layer 2 liquidity solution Connext.

Written by: Pan Zhixiong

The original three-legged Ethereum Rollup ecosystem finally ushered in a fourth strong competitor. Although StarkWare has been developing expansion solutions related to ZK Rollup and zk-STARK technologies, the StarkNet launched this time is systematic Explained their ZK Rollup plan, advantages and path.

This means that the most powerful ecosystem in the Ethereum Rollup expansion plan will be divided into two major gangs: “ZK Gang” (Matter Labs and StarkWare) and “Optimism” (Optimism and Offchain Labs).

Although there are two teams working on the same gang, the specific technologies are still slightly different: in the ZK Rollup scheme, the core difference between Matter Labs (zkSync) and StarkWare (StarkNet) is that the zero-knowledge proof technology uses zk-SNARK and zk-STARK; In the Optimistic Rollup scheme, the core difference between Optimism (OVM) and Offchain Labs (Arbitrum Rollup) is that the scheme of the fraud proof mechanism is different (single-round interaction and multi-round interaction).

In addition, various Layer 2 solutions are also continuing to iterate and introduce new concepts, such as Aztec and Connext that have not spoken for a long time.

StarkWare (StarkNet)

At the end of January, the zero-knowledge proof research organization StarkWare stated that it will develop a Layer 2 expansion network based on the ZK Rollup concept for Ethereum, named StarkNet, and at the same time disclosed a detailed roadmap, and will gradually achieve decentralization in a four-step manner To optimize and improve the application ecology.

In fact, StarkWare has previously launched a complete Layer 2 solution Volition (Validium), and has cooperated with multiple institutions to launch StarkEx technology specifically for exchange scenarios. dYdX, DeversiFi and Immutable are its partners.

Therefore, it can also be understood that StarkEx is only a specific application scenario of StarkNet. It is used by StarkWare to test the water based on STARK’s Rollup technology, which can be used in complex transaction logic (spot, derivatives, NFT) and transfer scenarios.

Extended reading: “Challenge all Rollup expansion plans, what are the advantages of StarkNet? 》

In addition, StarkWare also released the concept of DeFi Pooling, which reduces the transaction cost of Layer 1 through aggregating transactions.

Extended reading: “Understanding DeFi Pooling in Three Minutes: Providing Scalability for Existing L1 Projects”

Offchain Labs (Arbitrum Rollup)

The Ethereum expansion program Arbitrum Rollup development team Offchain Labs has disclosed more projects in its ecology. The first batch of applications include the centralized trading protocol Bancor, the decentralized auction tool Bounce.finance, the automatic market maker Burgerswap, Hop Protocol, and decentralization. Perpetual contract exchange MCDEX and decentralized exchange Swapr.

In addition, the decentralized perpetual contract exchange MCDEX also wrote an article explaining why they chose Arbitrum Rollup. In their view, the Arbitrum solution has lower chain costs, higher technology maturity, and more developer friendly.

Extended reading: “The choice of MCDEX V3 expansion plan: Optimistic Rollup or ZKRollup? 》

Optimism (Optimistic Rollup)

Optimism’s Optimistic Rollup has been launched on the Ethereum main network. Although it has very limited functions and only launched a few functions in cooperation with Synthetix, there are still a lot of funds that are gradually migrated to the Layer 2 network. The current migration volume is about 1 Billion dollars, it only took 15 days.

Extended reading: How is the Synthetix experience of Optimism’s Layer 2 version? 》

Aztec (ZK² Rollup)

Although the Aztec team also adopted the ZK Rollup solution, their difference lies in their focus on privacy.

They announced their cooperation with StarkWare last month and launched a special software agreement (Software License) version 1.0 of Polaris for zero-knowledge proof applications (prover-verifier paradigm), similar to the concept of GPL, and specific scenarios are used in (ZK) Rollup related applications.

Extended reading: “Introducing Polaris”

Matter Labs (zkSync)

There are no new developments in the Matter Labs team and ecology for the time being.

Cross-Layer 2 bridge solution

In addition to the infrastructure of Layer 2, in fact, some surrounding protocols in the Layer 2 field are also more and more worthy of attention, in order to provide a more complete and user experience solution.

When the major Ethereum Layer 2 expansion networks are iterating and building ecosystems at a rapid rate, the problem of liquidity isolation between the various Layer 2 networks has gradually been exposed. How to easily transfer assets between different networks has become a very important special topic.

Connext

The Vector technology developed by the Connext team, which has been conquering state channel technology before, is currently the most important solution in this field. By building fast state channels between different Layer 2 networks, you can quickly migrate at very low cost. Assets, improve the efficiency of the network.

At present, their real-time Layer 2 transfer application Vector has released version 0.1.0 on the Ethereum mainnet, and will concentrate on promoting the adoption of Layer 2 network applications. Former developers can integrate Vector into their applications or protocols to realize micropayments. Connext said that this marks the beginning of the Ethereum multi-chain ecosystem, where users can seamlessly interact with wallets and applications running on a variety of different layer 2 networks and shards.

Extended reading: “Avoid the Rollup battlefield, Connext chooses to use the state channel to get through the Layer 2 “Island””

Celer

Similarly, Celer, a professional team researching state channels, also said that similar products will be launched. They stated in the 2021 roadmap that they will implement state channel technology that can increase liquidity between Layer 2.

Celer said that in the short and medium term, the Ethereum expansion solution Rollup is the best solution to increase the throughput on the chain before sharding. However, the interaction between each Layer 2 network and between the second and the first network usually has Very long delays and poor user experience, Celer plans to solve such challenges and realize real-time and instant transactions between Rollup and Rollup and the first-tier network.

Disclaimer: As a blockchain information platform, the articles published on this site only represent the author’s personal views, and have nothing to do with the position of ChainNews. The information, opinions, etc. in the article are for reference only, and are not intended as or regarded as actual investment advice.

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A quick look at Cairo from StarkWare: Turing’s complete production-grade STARK system (www.blockcast.cc)

Regardless of your computing and savings needs, Cairo is useful if you need to apply it on a large scale on Ethereum at a lower gas cost.

Original title: “Introduction | Hello, Cairo! 》
Written by: StarkWare
Translation & proofreading: Elisa & Ajian

Cairo is the first production-level platform used to generate STARK certificates for general-purpose calculations, with Turing completeness and high efficiency. All the content we develop is written in Cairo, starting from submitting Reddit’s bid to the various projects we are about to deploy: DeversiFi, Immutable and dYdX.

Regardless of your computing and savings needs, Cairo is useful if you need to apply it on a large scale on Ethereum at a lower gas cost. In the next few quarters, we will begin to provide Cairo’s developer tools. Before that, please contact us directly and we can develop your application together.

Introduction | Hello, Cairo!

Project Background

Expanding the Reddit bidding is a milestone for us at StarkWare, not only because of our achievements (300,000 transactions with a single STARK certificate), but also because of the way we achieved that result. This Reddit bid is our first deployment of Cairo on the Ethereum mainnet, a Turing complete 1 production-level platform for generating STARK proofs for general computing. Our other projects to be deployed on the mainnet will be based on Cairo, including:

  • StarkEx 2.0 by DeversiFi (spot trading)
  • StarkEx system supporting ImmutableX, NFT trading system for Gods Unchained game of Immutable team
  • StarkEx system built for dYdX’s perpetual contract

This article will cover the following: 1. Why do we need Cairo; 2. The novelty of the project, its performance and expansion efficiency; 3. Discuss our development plan for sharing the Cnaairo tool chain with community developers.

Requirements: Turing’s complete production-grade STARKs

Since our establishment, we have been focusing on solving scalability issues, starting with Ethereum scalability. We realized early on that proof of validity is a powerful scalability solution, and STARKs are unique in solving scalability problems for general-purpose computing. A quick review of the concept: an off-chain prover (Prover) can handle a large number of operations (such as a large number of transactions) and produce a smaller validity proof, which in turn can be verified on the chain.

Each of our partners has a unique type of computing that needs to be delegated to Layer 2. DeversiFi’s spot trading, Immutable’s NTF generation and trading, and dYdX is required to implement perpetual contracts. Custom handwriting for each project to build a STARK system 2 will be time-consuming, just like building a dedicated ASIC for each calculation. Therefore, if we want to expand our business and support high performance and speed, we need a Turing-complete production-level STARK system on the second layer, so we developed Cairo. Cairo is C PU A lgebraic I ntermediate R epresentation ( central processing intermediary algebraic code (AIR)) acronym, and contains a single set of instructions to verify this AIR “CPU” in.

Solution: Cairo, a universal solution for a single AIR

Cairo connects a series of tool chains for building general computing scalability and zero-knowledge proofs.

All systems previously deployed on the testnet or mainnet can only be classified as “circuit writing library” 3 . These libraries can be seen as a tool chain for creating ASICs for specific calculations. Cairo is completely different and should be seen as a transition from ASIC to CPU.

Cairo is the first production-level certification system that implements Turing’s complete von Neumann structure. Each Cairo program P and the data D it processes are stored in the memory of the virtual machine. Cairo’s single AIR can verify any Cairo program, so the verifier is also single, which can be in the form of smart contracts or WebAssembly programs. In other words, Cairo’s AIR can verify the completeness of the calculation of the program P with the data D and the correctness of the system state after execution.

With Cairo, new business logic no longer requires a new smart contract, but only another Cairo program. As a result, the boundary between business logic and certification system is clearly defined.

Using a single AIR to solve all problems also has a far-reaching significance: we can use a single proof to assert the integrity of the execution of different programs. For example, VeeDo-based sealed bid auctions, the generation of Gods Unchained cards, and a batch of dYdX transactions can all use the same proof to verify their validity. We call this feature the Universal Authentication Service (GPS), and we will provide more relevant information soon.

Cairo language

Cairo programs need to be written in a language similar to assembly language, also called Cairo, and Cairo language has the following functions: memory, function calls, recursion and branch conditions. Cairo also uses the “hints” on the Prover side to create shortcuts and enable specific calculations. We say that Cairo is production-grade. We are not only talking about the upcoming mainnet deployment, but also the powerful development environment we built for this, including a compiler from Cairo language to Cairo bytecode, and a simulation tool. Cairo executes the virtual machine, debugger, integrated development environment, and the aforementioned single Verifier smart contract written in Solidity.

Introduction | Hello, Cairo!

We will release a white paper soon, detailing Cairo’s design philosophy and the complete specification of this new generation of programming language. In the next few months, we will begin to release tools for writing, debugging and running Cairo programs (register to receive update notifications).

Cairo’s efficiency and safety

We can consider efficiency and safety from two aspects: mathematical aspects (AIR) and engineering implementation aspects; and Cairo will make the code more efficient and safe in both aspects.

Cairo’s AIR is relatively simple, which can improve efficiency and reduce costs for on-chain verification (Verifier) ​​and off-chain proof (Prover) services. This also improves security, because auditing a single simple AIR is much safer than auditing multiple complex dedicated AIRs.

Therefore, with Cairo, we can rely on a single validator smart contract and no longer need to deploy a validator for each application. In terms of security, this means that the audit of this smart contract can protect all applications from proving system risks, and applications only need to audit their own business logic. For business logic, understanding and reviewing its code is much simpler than dedicated AIR.

In order to understand the specific efficiency in actual applications in Cairo, let’s look at these two examples:

DeversiFi

Currently, the StarkEx system supporting DeversiFi 2.0 on the Ethereum mainnet is an ASIC STARK. We have also deployed the same StarkEx in Cairo, run it on the testnet, and compare the two systems. Generally speaking, CPU is slower than ASIC, but in actual cases, due to Cairo’s powerful optimization, there is almost no difference between the two systems:

  • Cairo prover is 30% slower than current ASIC implementation
  • The validator only consumes 1.03 times the gas

Reddit bidding

Together with other projects in the Ethereum ecosystem, we sprinted to complete the Reddit scalability bid. Thanks to Cairo, we can:

  • We completed the game with unprecedented efficiency. We can pack all 300,000 transactions into one proof, and aggregate call data is used (only the modified account information is used to represent the entire batch, not including the call data of each transaction). This is a direct result of Cairo’s programmability and the convenience of optimized algorithms. We completed all tasks in 6 minutes and 03 seconds.

It is worth noting that higher-level programming can easily add optimizations, and the benefits of these optimizations are usually greater than the CPU disadvantages mentioned above. Therefore, in most cases, using Cairo may actually end up achieving better performance than using tailored AIR.

  • We finished the game at a super fast speed. No one noticed that our single certificate was submitted to the mainnet on July 15, two weeks earlier than the six-week sprint period. This is also the miracle that Cairo brings to us.

Long way ahead

We plan to provide Cairo and GPS developed by us and others to developers in the community and provide powerful development tools for everyone. We plan to develop compilers from higher-level languages ​​to Cairo, and we will also provide developers with us for a long time. Development environment on the cloud. All this requires a lot of energy and resources, Cairo was not built in a day. We will regularly update Cairo step by step to provide you with stronger functions, performance and optimization.

At present, we are constantly debugging Cairo in use with our partners DeversiFi, Immutable and dYdX, and progress is made every week. If you want to start developing on Ethereum now, but are limited by scalability and increasing gas prices, if you want to build a real business and need a production-level high-performance tool chain, please contact us.

footnote

[1]: We use the popular meaning of the term, that is, to cover all real-world general calculations

[2]: To be more precise, the difference between applications lies in AIR. AIR to STARK is like arithmetic circuit and R1CS system to SNARKs.

[3]: According to the comprehensive classification of zkp.science

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