June 23 Twitter Space Highlights: Consolidating Linea Ecosystem with a Reliable Infra Layer
On June 23rd, 2023, iZUMi Finance hosted a Twitter Space with Polyhedra, featuring guest speakers from Linea, Celer Network, and HAPI. Participating guests were,
Antonio, VP Product of Polyhedra Network
Emily Lin, Developer Advocate at Linea
Vadym & Jumbo, HAPI Core Team
Michael Zhou, Core Developer at Celer Network
Insightful discussions and comments around developing the infrastructure layer and user education on Linea were shared during the event. The recording of the Twitter Space event can be played at https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1djxXlQongRxZ, or you can read this dedicated blog post which covers the major highlights.
Host, iZUMi Finance
What’s your intention to expand/migrate/start building on Linea? Are there specific reasons for adopting zero-knowledge other than other roll-ups? For user education purposes, what’s the advantage of adopting zkRollups?
Michael Zhou, Core Developer at Celer Network
It’s a very natural choice given the entire ZK hype or Layer 2 hype in a border sense for us to expand to Linea, which is promising and beneficial for the potential users.
Linea is 99.5 % EVM-compatible and we can just seamlessly try to connect our frontend and backend to it and be able to support a seamless cross-chain experience.
For ZK, it provides an extra layer of security on top of other rollups that are more Optimistic based. They need a 7-day withdrawal period, and don’t have this mathematical basis for its security.
In terms of both adoption and security, it’s very natural for us to expand and build on top of Linea to provide the cross-chain experience for any users that are going on-board to Layer 2 and off-board to Layer 1. It’s something we feel like we have to do.
Emily Lin, Developer Advocate at Linea
When we talk about a chain, we talk about users versus developers. These are two cohorts of people who think about different things. But assuming everyone is a user, while we’re transacting on it, why do we use a roll-up or Layer 2 in the first place? Scalability, lower transaction times, and lower fees. When it comes to Optimistic versus ZK, Optimistic roll-ups were the first ones who came out. The way roll-ups work is they roll up a bunch of transactions and post it once back to Ethereum.
But how do you prove what you’re posting is correct? The way that we do this is through proofs. For optimistic roll-ups, what they do is something called Fraud Proofs.
So basically, we assume everything is correct. I’m going to wait 7 days to allow anyone to challenge that assumption. And if they think it’s incorrect, they can submit a fraud proof, and then that verification will go through. What that means is two things, a less secure trust assumption, as well as a challenge period. If you want to withdraw your funds, you don’t have instant liquidity.
Then there’s this migration to ZK roll-ups. Instead of fraud proofs, they do something called validity proofs that actually verify transactions on time. There is math verifying so that is a much more secure trust assumption for users. It’s not instant finality, but like it is relatively quick, especially compared to 7 days as that challenge period.
Essentially, as the key proofs get faster and faster, you can imagine getting your liquidity on your Layer 1 much faster. For optimistic roll-ups users, there are workarounds for the challenge period like bridges that will offer in time liquidity. However, this problem isn’t solved for getting your NFTs on Layer 1. That’s why users would be interested in ZK versus Optimistic. ZK roll-ups are really interesting because of their validity proofs where you can apply proofs on top of proofs, like recursive proofs, allowing you to have more scale than a fraud proof would be.
Vadym, HAPI Core Team
As a project that builds on Linea, I would say there is a trifecta that kind of encapsulates what benefits we personally see in Linea. We touched upon privacy, scalability, and certainly cost efficiency. From our standpoint, the two major ones are scalability and cost efficiency.
In our case, we are a cyber security protocol. We store a lot of data on-chain, we transact a lot on-chain, we engage our users and are creating a lot of stuff for the community. Users engage with our protocol on different levels. Cost efficiency is something that we look for.
Right now we are building on Solana and Near, and on Ethereum. Even on a blockchain like Solana, users encounter issues with the cost being added up inevitably. Linea can solve that issue for us. The cost efficiency factor is something that we definitely look into, something that we explore on a constant and consistent basis.
Cost efficiency and scalability are definitely something that stands out for Linea.
Antonio, VP Product of Polyhedra Network
We optimize the core algorithm of ZK and expect a future where ZK proofs can get faster and faster within seconds with our most advanced ZK knowledge proof technology. What we are seeing in the future is that as more users are migrating to Layer 2 roll-ups. We do expect that we can have security laps faster and faster using the validity proofs. We may have an almost instant proof generation and verification process that would allow an instant liquidity of your asset compared to Optimistic roll-ups.
Host, Polyhedra
The market is hyped to see a “zk Summer” given that there are several zkRollup Layer 2s that are already launched / launching very soon, including zkSync Era, Scroll, Taiko, PolygonEVM, etc. What are Linea’s unique solutions to the market compared to other zkRollups?
Emily Lin, Developer Advocate at Linea
There are different types of zkEVMs, which basically means different degrees of compatibility with Ethereum. For users, it doesn’t really make much difference. But for developers specifically, this is where advantages become the most apparent. If we start from type 4 like Starknet and zkSync, you can write in Solidity but the byte code it compiles down to is not compatible. If we move further down, type 1 is going to be Ethereum equivalent. That means everything is the same as developing on Ethereum. Type 2 is the middle ground where the language level is basically equivalent (you can write in Solidity) as well as byte code equivalent.
What this means for developers specifically, is they don’t need to change tools. They leverage all the network effects of the Ethereum ecosystem. It’s probably why a lot of people have also deployed on Linea. There’s no vendor switching costs, because we are basically EVM equivalent. That means you can just deploy, and it should be good for the most part. That’s where we would sit compared to zkSync or Starknet. Linea is going for a type 2. We fall along the same lines of Polygon zkEVM, and Scroll is in our category as well.
What about taking a further step? Amongst the type 2 landscape, where does Linea sit? When it comes to choosing an Layer 2 with regards to where to build, I as an entrepreneur probably care about a few things. How easy is it? How many users are there? How much trust do I have in the future of ZK roll-ups? Linea sitting within Consensys is a pretty big power move to the extent since we have a whole ecosystem to support it. We have Besu, which is our Ethereum client that will enable us to reuse those components, create performance optimization for the Layer 2, and make it easier to move to a type 1 in the future if we want.
The other piece is Infura, an RPC endpoint. Basically, we give the ability to scale. For ZK roll-ups, a lot of the bottleneck actually comes from the rate limiting in the RPC endpoint, and not actually the roll-up itself (at least that’s what we’ve experienced with Linea with our insane amount of engagement)
The last and also the strongest piece is Metamask’s native integration. In your Metamask wallet, there’s already a default network configured with Linea. You don’t have that UX issue of having to add the network. There’s a pretty significant percentage of people who would just stop a transaction simply because they don’t know how to add a network, or they don’t feel comfortable adding one. There’s like other metrics around, like reducing fund loss incidents. That’s actually also a really strong value prop. Imagine Metamask with 30 million users in the future using Linea as a home for native integrations, which is a really strong value prop, especially for builders in the space because you have that entire ecosystem trust.
At some point, tech is going to fade into the background. What’s left in the community and the audience is the liquidity on-chain and the trust you have in the project.
Host, iZUMi Finance
Learning from the experience of zkSync Era, the user experience and network performance has not been as satisfactory as Optimistic roll-ups such as Arbitrum. In your opinion, how is zkRollup’s situation right now in terms of user experience? And in what aspects Linea is improving in user experience to cater more users?
Emily Lin, Developer Advocate at Linea
The closer the roll-ups are tied to the way users interact with it is an improvement. The user experience would fall more along the lines of how our wallets are improving, how gasless transactions are happening. So more so on the apps and tools that are built on top of the ecosystem.
To address a common pain point that Linea has experienced so far in the course of testnet, is we are running the Linea Voyages specifically to help ask users to battle-test our network before mainnet happens. We ran into the problem of too many users participating. Our faucets were drying up, more so the RPC endpoints were the ones that were being rate limited and not the actual network itself. It should all be fixed once we get to the mainnet where the experience is not so insane like that.
In that aspect, Linea is improving its user experience to an extent by trying everything and spamming ourselves now, so that once we do get to the mainnet, the experience will be smoother.
Another thing is decentralization in our roadmap. Not that it would necessarily affect the user experience, but when you feel more confident about the security of the roll-up that you’re transacting on. That’s definitely at the forefront of our minds.
Jumbo, HAPI Core Team
Wallet is crucial to the user experience. The less users see the blockchain, for example, transaction fees, gas fees, all of that, the more enjoyable the whole experience will be, even though it sounds contradictory.
Linea is on the path of making the whole blockchain experience as discreet as possible, and contributing efforts towards making sure that everything works smoothly and seamlessly. Metamask ties into that. We don’t need to add any new network to use it since it’s already there, which saves a lot of hassle, especially for a user that might not be as well versed as we are here. We are kind of pretentious, and not everyone wants to double into all of those intricacies.
Michael Zhou, Core Developer at Celer Network
The fact that Linea is still in testnet brings a unique set of challenges. Testnets provide free or low cost for the majority of users. We do see a lot of spamming, a lot of sybil behaviors on these testnets, including Linea. Users are trying to engage with the network. We as bridge operators also have to manage the expectation like how many users are going to use the testnet and scout up our infrastructure to accommodate those requests.
To some degree, testnets can be even more active than mainnets. One purpose of testing is the performance stress test on what the upcoming mainnet would look like.
Host, Polyhedra
When you move to Linea, what are some unique features or improvements of your protocols that will only work with the zk-technologies? How does ZK perfect your development map in general?
Jumbo, HAPI Core Team
We can store even more data on-chain, which we are proactively trying to do. The efficiency also translates to a more convenient experience for users as well, because they pay less for each transaction to interact with our protocol. For example, on the level of submitting any kind of data to our database or getting rewards for their submissions.
Everything around cost efficiency works in tandem. So it works for the sake of users and it works for the sake of us. We benefit from Linea by leveraging its cost efficiency as well. For example, we have also built the database on Solana where we pay a lot of costs. That definitely hampers the experience. From our standpoint, the cost efficiency factor is the most prominent one.
It also propels adoption. When people need to pay a lot for transactions just to simply interact with the protocol on-chain, it definitely dissuades people from even touching on-chain. If we can lower the barrier of entry by decreasing the costs that people spend on all of these on-chain things, we can properly increase adoption much faster.
Michael Zhou, Core Developer at Celer Network
In terms of features, there’s nothing particularly unique to Linea. All the ZK stuff we call in engineering terms abstract away from developer’s technique. You don’t have to care about whether it’s type 2 type or type 4 to be more compatible.
Most of the ZKs, the transactions are validated and verified mathematically that they are abstract away from developers, even further away from ok.
Future-wise there isn’t anything we specifically develop for ZK, but in terms of configurations and safety parameters, we can confidently say that transactions are much less likely to get reverted on a Linea versus Optimistic roll-ups or even alt Layer 1s.
More specifically, on Linea, once the transaction is posted in a batch and submitted to Layer 1, you can be sure that it will never be reverted. But for an Optimistic roll-up, you can still technically be reverted even without the 7-day challenge period.
That’s one unique advantage of ZK roll-ups that you have a much better transaction finality versus other solutions. That is a huge press for security-focused protocols like cross-chain bridges. We really need that final guarantee for a good balance between safety and efficiency.
Emily Lin, Developer Advocate at Linea
ZK technology and ZK proofs fall into two flavors. Some people might get confused because they highly identify ZK proofs with identity and privacy.
With that regard, ZK technology has a lot of strength for being able to preserve that privacy aspect. ZK roll-ups are actually not a privacy solution. We use the properties of being ZK proofs that basically are able to take away information, but still prove it’s true as a means of the scalability portion of a roll-up.
So we’re not necessarily using the privacy part. We are not a privacy solution, but we’re using that ability to take away data as part of the scaling part. Just like the recursive proof sign with regards to Layer 2s. If you’re not using ZK proofs, you can’t do that recursive scale with fraud proofs.
Antonio, VP Product of Polyhedra Network
We focus more on the ZK algorithm. One thing about the ZK algorithm is that it was actually proposed around the 1980s when there even was no internet. ZK does not have to be a Web3 technology. Even in a broader way, ZK is not only for privacy or authenticity. We see ZK roll-ups for scalability and also have ZK for interoperability.
We believe that in the future ZK is also a way to introduce more users to Web3, to the blockchain ecosystem, where we can use proofs to generate proofs of other aspects, like Web2 or your physical world attributes and verify them, and bring them onto the blockchain ecosystem.
Host, iZUMi Finance
What can we expect from Linea for the rest of 2023?
Emily Lin, Developer Advocate at Linea
Linea’s mainnet launch is coming this summer! After mainnet, in the tech aspects, we will start going full throttle into thinking about how we’re going to decentralize. In general, continue our developer activation through hackathons, community calls, and more Twitter Spaces!
