According to Nicolas Liochon, the head of zkEVM Linea at Consensys, zero-knowledge proof solutions are critical in helping scale the Ethereum ecosystem, but proto-danksharding is expected to significantly reduce roll-up costs. Speaking during the Korea Blockchain Week, Liochon predicted that proto-danksharding could reduce roll-up costs by up to 10 times.
Test Phase Continues for EIP-4844
Proto-danksharding, also known as Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) identifier EIP-4844, aims to reduce the costs of rollups that aggregate off-chain transactions and data and send computation proofs to the Ethereum blockchain. The Ethereum Foundation has not yet determined an expected launch date for proto-danksharding, but development and testing are still ongoing.
According to Ethereum’s documentation, rollups are still expensive in terms of their potential because call data is processed by all Ethereum nodes and the data is stored indefinitely on the chain despite its need to be available for only a short period of time. Consensys completed Linea’s launch in August 2023, hired over 150 partners, and bridged over $26 million in Ethereum.
Increasing Costs of Layer-1 Usage
EIP-4844 will introduce data blocks that can be sent and added to blocks. The data stored in the blocks will not be accessible by the Ethereum Virtual Machine and will be deleted after a certain period, greatly reducing transaction costs.
“In reality, the cost of rollups depends on data availability. We are writing all the data to Layer-1, so we have the same level of security. However, this is expensive and accounts for 95% of the cost.”
Liochon stated that Linea’s off-chain computation, which verifies, packages, and then generates a cryptographic proof for aggregated transactions, represents only one-fifth of the cost. This highlights the biggest obstacle to making ZK-rollups a scaling solution for the Ethereum ecosystem, unlike other solutions such as Optimistic Rollups. Liochon also said that Linea aims to be a general-purpose ZK-rollup for various decentralized applications and solutions within the Ethereum ecosystem.
“We are a general aggregator. We don’t want to have a specific use case or a specific domain. Supporting all kinds of applications, including DeFi, gaming, and social, is very important.”
