Are ZK-proofs the answer to Bitcoin's Ordinal and BRC-20 problem?

1 year ago

The Bitcoin (BTC) web has faced a litmus trial successful caller weeks owed to the accrued demands of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens being inscribed onto the preeminent blockchain.

The resulting summation successful fees and transaction congestion has near the wider Bitcoin assemblage frustrated, considering that immoderate BRC-20 tokens impact meme tokens that person attracted billions of dollars successful capital successful caller weeks.

The Ethereum ecosystem has benefitted from the improvement of scaling solutions that person brought monolithic improvements successful web capableness and processing ability. Zero-knowledge proofs (zk-proofs) successful peculiar person grabbed headlines implicit the past fewer months, with a fig of projects adopting the scaling technology.

Cointelegraph spoke exclusively to Eli Ben-Sasson, the co-founder of StarkWare and the pioneer of zk-STARKs (zero-knowledge Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge), to research whether the exertion could beryllium the reply to Bitcoin’s latest challenge.

Zk-proofs are cryptographic protocols that let a enactment to beryllium a connection oregon information is existent without revealing immoderate information. The exertion assures privateness and information portion adding capableness to blockchains successful particular, by reducing the computational load needed to verify transactions and different information and accusation stored connected chain.

The renowned mathematician and cryptographer credits Bitcoin for starting his travel of exploration astir the committedness of validity, cryptographic and zero-knowledge proofs to amended blockchain technology. Highlighting the "deeply entwined" quality of the scaling solutions and blockchains, Ben-Sasson summed up the imaginable for zk-proofs to payment the Bitcoin network:

“Validity proofs and STARKs let you successful a precise businesslike mode to usage the integrity of mathematics to widen the orbit of integrity that a blockchain covers to invitation anyone to enactment and adhd much capableness to the network.”

Bitcoin’s blockchain volition proceed to enactment arsenic an interior ellipse of integrity, portion zk-proofs widen the root of integrity and bring successful much capacity, creating what Ben-Sasson described arsenic a "positive flywheel" effect:

“The much capableness you bring, the much societal functions tin beryllium used, adjacent if it's money, you tin bash micro payments, oregon you tin adhd caller things if you let astute contracts. And past there's much spot successful the strategy and it adds much value.”

Ben-Sasson reiterated his content that the Bitcoin web could spot greater integrity and ratio from the mathematical benefits afforded by validity proofs. He added that the likes of Bitcoin developers Greg Maxwell, Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn had been aboriginal proponents of STARK transparent proofs of validity and privacy, which bash not necessitate trusted setup and stay quantum secure.

The imaginable for Bitcoin, which archetypal and foremost acts arsenic decentralized hard money, to let much wide forms of computation and societal functions remains a treatment constituent for its community. For Ben-Sasson, the imaginable of incorporating zk-proofs is intelligibly being driven by the request successful the marketplace for other functionality connected apical of Bitcoin that is being powered by BRC-20 tokens:

“For it (BRC-20) to truly person the level of integrity that is offered by Bitcoin, determination indispensable beryllium a hard fork that allows these things to beryllium verified and validated and person the integrity of Bitcoin. And that's a immense determination and a immense statement point.”

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, ZeroSync Association is simply a recently formed startup that is processing zk-proof powered tools allowing users to validate the authorities of the Bitcoin web without having to download the blockchain oregon spot a 3rd enactment for verification.

ZeroSync’s validity impervious allows users to verify Bitcoin’s concatenation authorities instantly, removing the request to download implicit 500GB of blockchain information presently required to sync a Bitcoin node.

ZeroSync co-founder Robin Linus told Cointelegraph that its concatenation authorities impervious does not lick web congestion directly, but would region the request for users to download inscriptions that person been clogging up the Bitcoin blockchain.

However zk-proofs inactive clasp committedness successful helping remedy existent web congestion. Linus said ZeroSync has besides developed a Bitcoin client-side validation protocol dubbed zkCoins, which allows processing up to 100 token transactions per second:

“It uses inscriptions, but the on-chain footprint is overmuch little than BRC-20, and it does not bloat the UTXO set.”

Linus added that a SNARK (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) verifier connected Bitcoin’s main furniture could alteration an full spectrum of scaling solutions including zk-rollups, trustless bridges to sidechains arsenic good arsenic the imaginable to peg BTC onto zkCoins to heighten privateness and summation throughput:

“It's fantastic to spot that validity proofs are gaining much traction successful the Bitcoin assemblage now. People person already started discussing a caller opcode connected the bitcoin-dev mailing list.”

Linus besides noted that different Bitcoin layer-2 scaling solutions specified arsenic the Lightning Network, Fedimint and Chashu, which are privacy-preserving custodians based connected Chaumian eCash, person seen accrued involvement pursuing web congestion driven by Ordinals and BRC-20 minting.

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