Curve Finance reveals Layer 2 solution with zkSync
In big news for the whole DeFi community, Curve and Matter Labs announced a path for scaling Ethereum in a secure and decentralized way. A zkSync L2 smart contract capable testnet with a Curve stablecoin pool already running on it.
What is a ZK rollup?
As Ethereum fills with more users and dapps, gas prices and transaction times are going up beyond levels of being sustainable. Scalability is in high demand, rollups are seen as the answer. A sentiment that was recently confirmed by Vitalik Buterin as the only choice for scaling on Ethereum. Notably, because a ZK rollup keeps intact all of Eth’s security and decentralization.
ZK rollups (ZKR) even with a single validator are considered extremely secure, because they rely on pure maths. There is no activity with an economic incentive to keep funds safe. Essentially, funds going through a ZKR are just as secure as on the underlying L1. For Curve, a protocol that moves millions, this is especially important. Furthermore, ZK rollups confirm quickly meaning it is a viable solution for token swaps – Loopring for example supports 7000 trades per Ethereum block.
The main issue with zkSync is that until recently it was extremely difficult to support any type of smart contract in a ZK rollup. It was seen more as a solution for making a one payment transaction.
Smart contracts in a ZK rollup?
As we know innovation moves fast in DeFi, and with users starting to migrate to alternative chains such as Tron or Binance Smart Chain to avoid high gas fees for their farming strategies. It looks like Curve wants things to move even faster, and avoid losing users. Matter Labs is making this possible through their SNARK-friendly Zinc VM.
Thanks to @the_matter_labs, we've got a Curve pool working on zkSync L2 testnet!
— Curve Finance (@CurveFinance) October 9, 2020
Live demo: https://t.co/iC9yqNx6HH
Source code: https://t.co/KaxMd3ErWT
More about the pool, zkSync and the furure of Ethereum:https://t.co/etI2Vknbjj
Developers can write their smart contracts in the Zinc programming language to use the L2 solution from day one. Furthermore, Zinc follows a simple Rust syntax which means that any Solidity or Vyper developer can learn the language in a couple of days. In fact, any smart contract written in Vyper can be ported over to Zinc almost line per line.
Importantly, all smart contracts on a zkSync L2 network can call each other in the same way as on mainnet. Meaning users will be able to expect the same composability that is powering the stacking of DeFi farming strategies – without all the high gas costs!