zkSync Era Mainnet Launch & NEW zkEVM with Alex Gluchowski and Anthony Rose

If we want to build a truly limitless internet of value, internet of roll-ups,

it has to be trustless. So all the bridges must be ZK, and that means that all the chains participating in this network have to be ZK chains.

This is our vision for hyperscalability.

The ZK EVM is here. It's on mainnet. David, we've got the episode. Announcement just went out as we are pressing publish on this episode. What are we talking about today?

We are talking about ZK Sync Era. The mainnet is live as of right now. So we got the two people from the ZK Sync team. We got Alex Glukowski, who's been with ZK Sync since forever, co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs, the team behind ZK Sync. We also got Anthony. Anthony is the new head of engineering, which uh is a very ambitious role as it relates to ZK stuff. That sounds challenging. We're going to walk through what this announcement is. What does it mean for a ZK EVM to go live? In the era of bank failures, we have a new era for Ethereum. At least that is what the ZK Sync is saying, uh, along with their ZK Sync era chain. Uh, so that is the announcement. We're gonna get into all these details and more so you can be informed about what this new Frontier Ethereum is.

Yes, this is the frontier of the frontiers, and that's where we're headed today. Hey, David, before we get in, gotta do a shout out. This one's for the devs. We gotta a special announcement for the devs sponsored by our friends over at David. Uh, before we get in, we have some disclosures to make. Of course, you can always find all of our disclosures on our disclosure page at bankless.com slash disclosures. Just want to let the bankless audience know we are advisors to ZK Sync. We are uh friends of the project. Um, we believe in its mission, we believe in scaling Ethereum through ZK EVMs. That is not why they're on the podcast today. They are on the podcast today because they built something, they launched something really big. David, what should folks pay attention to going to this episode?

Yeah, this is truly a new frontier. We all know what a roll-up is. We have experienced these roll-ups with Polygon Arbitrum and Optimism. These are a different kind of roll-up. This is a new unlock. And so, uh simply put, ZK EVMs, ZK rollups have more scale. But if you just think that they are optimistic rollups with more scale, you're gonna miss the force for the trees. And that is a conversation that we have in this episode. There are specific and unique new use cases that the ZK rollups, the ZK EVMs unlock that are not unlocked by optimistic rollups. And so this is a this is a new frontier. There are there's new treasure out here. There are new things to build, there's new optionality for devs to build cool new things that optimistic rollups, even though we love them as much as we do, just don't offer. Uh, and so as you are listening to this episode, dear listener, perhaps dev listener, uh, try to identify what those new opportunities lie. And we name some specific ones, but really it's up to your imagination because right now, many new ZK EVMs are coming online. They are all relatively blank slates of opportunity. Uh, and we've we've played this game before. We all remember, maybe not all of us, but I remember a time when Ethereum was just a layer one. Uh, and now there's been a bunch of layer two uh layer two opportunities. Uh, now we get to experience that all over again with the ZK EVM revolution, with ZK Sync leading the charge. Uh, so right, that is my long rant about what listeners should pay attention to in this episode.

Yeah, here you go, guys. We told you layer two summer was coming. We've been telling you for two years. It's here. Why how do we know that? Because we're shipping to mainnet. That's how you know. Go try this out. Of course, there'll be some risks in the episode. You can listen to that. But uh, this is an opportunity for you to get on board to the ZK EVM platform. Guys, we're gonna get right to the episode. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this possible, including our number one recommended crypto exchange.

Bakeless Nation, we are here with the Matter Labs team. Matter Labs, the creators of ZK Sync. We got Alex Glukowski, the co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs. He has been on the podcast before. Alex, welcome back to the show.

Hi David, hi Ryan, hello everyone. Pleasure to be here.

And new to Bankless, we have Anthony Rose. Anthony Rose is the head of engineering at Matter Labs and has a background in software and machine learning. Interestingly enough, prior to joining Matter Labs, Anthony spent a number of years in the industry building teams at SpaceX, but pretty cool that we snagged him for the crypto world. Anthony, welcome to the show.

Thanks a lot. Yeah, very happy to be here.

So we always love frontier metaphors here at Bankless. And with this announcement that we're going to walk through today, we have discovered a new frontier to explore. Can you guys walk us through the announcement of what you guys are dropping today? What is the big news?

Well, the ZK Sync era, the uh our ZKVM solution is now open to the users. Everyone can now start using it. It's a consummation of the launch, which took

A very long time, but that's also the beginning of a new journey.

And that's that. All right. We're we're we're wrapped. The network is live. It's here.

It's fine.

Okay, but what does this mean? Alex, kind of walk us through the significance of this. Can you kind of place this into perhaps even like Ethereum's history? Why why is this a significant thing both for Matter Labs and ZK Sync? And why is this significant for Ethereum at large?

I genuinely think it's significant for Ethereum as a large because ZKA VMs have been considered the

uh holy grail of scaling Ethereum from the inception of this concept. Uh it took a very long time. If people thought it's gonna take much longer.

Uh, but here we are, and uh this is really the the pivotal point for Ethereum where

The

real mass adoption with like full preservation of all the things that make Ethereum valuable really begins.

We will talk about those things. But this is where

uh you know we

the there is by now, I think, a broad consensus that zero knowledge um tech, ZKRO specifically, and and more specifically ZKVMs

is this path into the future, and it has multiple reasons.

And there's also a new name for this network. Can you walk us through this new brand for ZK Sync?

Uh, yes, we we we really think it's a new era for humanity where uh you can uh

Fully own yourself, your assets, your identity, all of your transactions. So for us, uh, we started ZK Sync four years ago with the

uh like from day one, there was a mission there. We want to accelerate the mass adoption of crypto.

We love the ideas from Bitcoin, we loved Ethereum,

uh, we love those technologies because they open humanity to more freedom,

gives you the ability to actually, you know, uh

Transact with anyone in the world, without barriers, without asking for permission,

without banks, without any kind of intermediaries.

And it was

revolutionary. It's for the first time in history that we have this technologies of global scale cooperation

without the trust assumptions.

And

for me, the question was like, how how can we bring it to anyone in the world? What needs to happen to get there?

And it was clear that a few things must be changed or must be invented and implemented.

We had a long way to improve the UX.

People had to build applications, people had to build wallets and all the infrastructure around the crypto.

But there was this one technical problem of scaling, which seemed impossible

from the point of view of technologies that we had four years ago.

And when I when I stumbled upon the idea of ZK proofs, six center knowledge proofs, or

Better call them proofs of computational integrity or snarks.

It was this aha moment where, like, I thought, wow,

this could be it. It feels like magic, like, not clear why it works,

but it works, and you can really verify

any number of transactions

with a single lightweight hardware like your cell phone or a full node or Raspberry Pi.

And uh there is no limit. You can you can you do one verification,

all the blocks, all the transactions are processed.

So you you're not breaking out of the blockchain, or you're you are breaking out of the blockchain dilemma. You're not

introducing new trust assumptions. You don't have to trust anyone. You still verify everything,

uh, but in a trustless way.

So the new name is called uh ZK Sync Era. That's what uh you you are launching with. And uh certainly we are living in an interesting era and interesting times. Um David and I have done so many podcasts this week, and I think we will next week and probably the weeks to come, about uh a bank crisis that seems to be going on in the United States and Europe and other parts of the world. Uh we're not sure how far this will spread or what all of the implications are. We're still trying to unpack that, as is everyone else. Um, but the root of it is kind of a uh, you know, a meta banking crisis that we will probably never be able to resolve in the existing banking system. And that is we cannot verify transactions. We don't know if the dollars in our account are actually backed or what they're backed by. This is the promise of something like a technology like Ethereum. Uh, the reason Ethereum has fallen short on living up to that promise so far is it hasn't been scalable as of yet. Although a lot of talented engineers have been working on that, including Matter Labs. And now here we have a ZK EVM launching on chain on mainnet and available with the next stage of that promise uh being fulfilled for Ethereum.

And I gotta say, while um the world is kind of on fire in various ways, uh, crypto is silently building this new scalable infrastructure that we hope, and I know you guys hope, can onboard the world into this bankless money system. So um congrats and thank you for shipping. And this is hugely, it's it's it's a monumental event that we have a ZK EVM in production on mainnet. Uh and uh you guys have been doing fantastic work in the in the background to make that happen. One question I have for you is um we've talked to uh many layer twos um, you know, previously on bankless, our listeners will be familiar with this. Um, what kind of staged rollout might we see at this point? So when you guys say it's available on mainnet, it's here, uh, what does that mean? What's the user experience? Are there gates? Are there still kind of um, you know,