The Rollup Coaster #19

February 9th, 2024

The Rollup Coaster is a bi-weekly newsletter that dives into the fascinating world of Ethereum, exploring the latest in rollups, zero-knowledge proofs, MEV-PBS, and much more.

This edition is written by Taiko’s Community Advocate Jünger.

Hold on tight! 🎢

Disclaimer: This newsletter is neither financial advice, nor is indicative of Taiko’s position on any of the material presented. Please do your own research.

Highlights 🎢

Vitalik discussed the potential of combining crypto and AI. He categorized collaborations into areas such as AI in blockchain games, AI as a crypto interface, AI enforcing blockchain rules, and blockchain projects aimed at creating beneficial AI. The discussion emphasized the technical and ethical challenges of integration, including the risk of adversarial attacks. It also highlighted the importance of cautious implementation to leverage both technologies effectively.
Discussions to increase the block gas limit are ongoing. Vitalik and Toni shared a research piece.
The rapid scaling that accompanied L2s resulted in fragmentation. Currently, rollups have limited communication and lack unity. Justin Drake discussed rollup fragmentation in a Bankless episode. He argued that theses such as shared sequencing and based rollup resolve this fragmentation.

ZK and rollup research 🧙

Two excellent papers by Ingonyama. The first article addressed some potential memory bottlenecks in Taiko’s Halo2 zkEVM circuits and proposed to solve this problem by splitting the circuit into two separate parts. The second article dove into sumcheck parallelization and introducing various algorithms for acceleration and efficiency.
Nethermind Research introduced STARKPack: A batch-proof generation method that reduces the total proof size and verifier time for modern STARKs.
A TEE Coprocessor: Sirrah, a mashup of Solidity and Gramine-SGX. Andrew Miller wrote it.
A great discussion about KZG vs FRI by Starkware with the participation of Taiko, Aztec, and Ulvatenna.
Anatomy of ZK Audit by Zellic.
New SNARK research dropped. Reef leverages the full power of folding and lookups.
Constant-Size zk-SNARKs in ROM from Falsifiable Assumptions. Great news for protocols that are not full-fledged SNARKs but use KZG.

ZK and rollup updates 🗞️

Bitcoin’s first ZK rollup Citrea was revealed.
Succinct introduced its decentralized prover network.
Lilith, a backend system for zero-knowledge proof generation.
Improving Superchain Incident Response Capabilities from OPLabs.
Applied ZK with Noir on Scroll.

MEV/PBS/staking research and updates 🔍

A wide-ranging article about preconfirmation published by Primev.
Finality Workshop by consensus client team of LambdaClass.
Financial Conduct Authority published a research article "Review of Maximal Extractable Value and Blockchain Oracles”.
Jon Charbonneau touched on LST(liquid staking token) designs and the LST market structure: Modular Money Liquid Staking For People In A Hurry.

Education and events 🎫

Circuit Braker is the first ZK-focused hackathon by ETHGlobal. The event has started but registration is still open.
ZK-related security competition by Scalebit.