Author: Wilson Lee, Biteye core contributor
Editor: Crush, core contributor of Biteye
Community: @BiteyeCN
*The full text is about 6,000 words and the estimated reading time is 10 minutes
0 1 Introduction
With the rapid penetration of modular blockchain into L2, the maturity of various RaaS tools, and the implementation of the Cancun upgrade, the threshold for building L2 has been greatly lowered, and technology is no longer the main obstacle to building Rollup.
In addition, emerging Rollups such as Base, Manta Pacific, and Blast have rapidly risen by using existing tools to build Rollups at low cost and shifting the focus of projects to the ecosystem, setting a benchmark for the market. The transformation of traditional applications to L2 and the explosion of various lightweight L2s seem to have become an irreversible trend.
In terms of the technical route of Rollup, there has long been a dispute between OP and ZK. Vitalik has repeatedly expressed the view of "OP in the short term, ZK in the long term" because ZK-Rollup still has many technical issues to be resolved.
With the advancement of technology, the infrastructure construction related to ZK-Rollup is becoming more mature. Rollup using ZK solution is very likely to occupy an important market share in the future L2 blowout. As a leading RaaS focusing on ZK, Lumoz has great potential to succeed in the near future.
0 2 Bottlenecks of ZK-Rollup
2.1 Rollup from a modular perspective
Readers may already be familiar with the basic principles of OP-Rollup and ZK-Rollup. Here we will understand Rollup again from a modular perspective.
Rollup essentially achieves optimal resource allocation through modular division of labor, allowing different participants to focus on one task, thereby improving overall efficiency.
The modular structure of Ethereum can be simply broken down into: data availability layer DA, consensus layer Consensus, settlement layer Settlement, and execution layer Execution.
Execution
Provides an execution environment to compute transactions, transform old states into new states, submit new states to the settlement layer, and fraud/validity proofs.
The execution layer can be further divided into Sequencer and Prover. Sequencer is responsible for calculating state transitions, while Prover is responsible for generating proofs (especially ZK-Rollup, because the calculation type and overhead of generating proofs have certain requirements on hardware) .
Settlement
Verify the correctness of the state transition of the execution layer calculation. Generally, it is a smart contract deployed on Layer1, which is responsible for verifying the calculation of the execution layer; the state hash of the verified Rollup block will be recorded on the chain, and the block generated by the Rollup obtains the finality.
For ZK-Rollup, the contract has written into it the verification algorithm for the ZK Proof submitted by a specific ZK-Rollup. After the ZK-Rollup is executed, it submits the state hash and ZKP to the contract, triggering a verification transaction. When the verification passes, the state hash is proven to be valid and the block obtains Finality.
(Source: https://docs.theradius.xyz/overview/introduction-to-radius)
Consensus
In most cases, the consensus layer is undertaken by Layer1. The state hash verified by the consensus layer is recorded on the chain, and the transaction blocks on the corresponding Rollup obtain the security protected by Layer1.
Data Availability Layer
Save the transaction data in the Rollup block and provide it to anyone so that they can reconstruct the Rollup transaction at any time. The DA layer can be Layer1, or a dedicated DA layer such as Celestia, EigenDA, or a more centralized data availability committee, etc.
2.2 Difficulties in Popularizing ZK-Rollup
Although ZK-Rollup has many advantages and is seen by Vitalik as a long-term Ethereum expansion solution, the many technical challenges it faces limit its large-scale adoption at this stage.
For example, the cost of calculating ZKP is too high, zkEVM is too complicated, and ZKP calculations have high hardware requirements, which may lead to centralization, etc.
Computing ZKPs is expensive
ZKP is computationally intensive. Taking zk-SNARKs, the most popular ZK algorithm, as an example, the production of ZKP actually converts the execution process of the program into a verifiable proposition.
This proposition will be abstracted into a system of polynomial equations. In order to prove the correctness of the program execution (the existence of polynomial solutions), pairing operations are required on the elliptic curve.
Polynomial generation and elliptic curve pairing are very computationally intensive as they require processing a large number of algebraic operations.
This computational complexity leads to high hardware requirements in terms of hardware requirements and execution time. Ordinary hardware may have difficulty completing these calculations in a reasonable time, especially when processing a large number of transactions.
The time to generate a zk-SNARK proof is much longer than the time to execute the original program (excluding the proof process). Depending on the implementation and transaction complexity, the time to generate a proof can be hundreds to thousands of times the original computation time.
ZKP calculations require high hardware and may lead to centralization
Due to the high computational cost and hardware requirements of ZKP, small-scale Rollup operators may find it difficult to afford the necessary investment to become a prover.
In this case, only a few participants with high-performance computing resources can effectively generate proofs, leading to a centralization trend in ZK-Rollup. This centralization may be contrary to the decentralized spirit of blockchain and may introduce single points of failure and censorship risks.
zkEVM is too complex
In terms of design compatibility, EVM was not designed to be compatible with zero-knowledge proof technology. EVM is a stack-based virtual machine that supports a series of operation codes (opcodes) for executing smart contracts.
In order to enable any program executed by the EVM to generate valid proofs through zk-SNARKs, it is necessary to create corresponding mathematical representations and proof logic for each opcode of the EVM. This not only requires complex cryptographic transformations, but also poses challenges to the compatibility of existing smart contracts.
Implementing zkEVM requires extensive mathematical modeling of EVM opcodes to convert program execution into a form that can be proven by zk-SNARKs.
This includes simulating the EVM's state transitions, memory operations, and contract calls. Given the flexibility and complexity of the EVM, this task is extremely difficult. At the same time, maintaining the efficiency and security of zkEVM and ensuring that it can generate small, verifiable proofs is also a major challenge.
0 3 How Lumoz solves the bottleneck of ZK-Rollup popularization
Lumoz is a decentralized ZK-RaaS (ZK-Rollup as a Service) platform and a PoW (Proof of Work) network that supports ZKP (Zero Knowledge Proof) mining.
To address a series of challenges faced by ZK-Rollup, Lumoz introduced the concept of ZK-RaaS. This service enables developers to launch their zkEVM chain in one minute without having to understand ZK or chain nodes in detail.
Lumoz also introduced the concept of ZK-PoW, inviting miners to participate in maintaining zkEVM and calculating ZKP. Lumoz's goal is to simplify the use of ZK-Rollup and promote its wider adoption, thereby promoting the large-scale deployment of zkEVM-based application chains.
Developers can deploy their ZK-Rollup (zkEVM) on multiple chains with a single click of a button. For miners, Lumoz, as a multi-chain PoW protocol, supports ZK mining on various public chains and generates zero-knowledge proofs for ZK-Rollup.
3.1 ZK-PoW Cloud: Solving the Problem of ZK Computing Power and Centralization
The problem of ZK computing power and centralization is essentially that ZKP computing requires high computing power, and the hardware threshold in turn leads to centralization problems.
Lumoz uses the ZK-PoW mechanism to incentivize miners to provide ZKP computing power and provide comprehensive hardware infrastructure for ZK-Rollup, which is one of the core concepts of Lumoz.
All participants, including users, developers, and miners, can benefit from Lumoz's economic model and promote the large-scale application of ZK-Rollup.
Lumoz uses existing hardware resources
After the transition from Ethereum PoW to PoS, many Ethereum mining machines lost their application scenarios. The value of these mining machines is about 12 billion US dollars in capital scale, and many of them are currently idle. With the large-scale implementation of ZK-Rollup, generating ZKP requires a large amount of hardware and mining machines, such as CPU, GPU and FPGA, to provide computing power.
Lumoz's optimized ZKP algorithm lowers the threshold for miners to participate and improves expansion efficiency
Propose a two-step submission mechanism for ZKP verification to lower the threshold for miners to participate
In order to encourage more miners to participate in ZKP computing tasks at the same time, Lumoz proposed a two-step submission mechanism for ZKP verification.
Submit proofhash: Within a certain time frame, multiple miners can participate in the calculation of ZKP, instead of letting the miner who calculates ZKP first get the reward immediately. This design allows for wider participation, not just limited to the miners with the strongest computing power. After completing the calculation of ZKP, miners will not immediately submit the original proof they calculated, but first hash the proof and their own address (proof/address) to generate a hash value called proofhash. Then, they submit this proofhash to a specific contract on the blockchain. This step does not require the specific content of the proof to be disclosed, ensuring the security and efficiency of the submission process, and allowing more miners to participate in the calculation.
Submitting ZKP: After the time frame ends, the miner submits the original proof and compares it with the previously submitted proofhash. This step ensures that the submitted proof is the one declared in the first step, preventing cheating. Miners who pass this verification will receive PoW rewards, and the amount of rewards is distributed according to the miner's rights and interests. It is not only the miner who first calculates the ZKP that will receive the reward.
(Source: https://docs.lumoz.org/v/zhong-wen-jian-ti/lumoz-bai-pi-shu-v2)
Optimize ZKP generation algorithm to improve proof efficiency
When the Rollup smart contract verifies the ZKP, submitting the original proof may trigger an on-chain attack. To avoid such attacks, ZK-Rollup often performs additional operations to obfuscate the original proof data. Lumoz's innovative two-step submission algorithm for ZKP adopts a "submit first, verify later" approach, avoiding unnecessary aggregation calculations of proofs and addresses.
In some open source zkEVMs, ZKP calculations and submissions are performed sequentially. This can become a bottleneck when ZK-Rollup submits a large number of sequences, as miners cannot calculate multiple ZKPs in parallel. Lumoz's two-step submission algorithm implements parallel calculation and sequential submission of ZKPs, enabling miners to perform multiple ZKP generation tasks simultaneously, significantly improving ZKP generation efficiency.
The Lumoz team also improved the ZKP recursive aggregation algorithm, significantly improving the utilization of machine resources in the cluster and further speeding up ZKP calculations. Stress tests conducted in a real environment showed that using a machine cluster consisting of 20 machines (each equipped with a 128-core CPU and 1TB of memory), a rate of 27.8 transactions per second can be maintained in about 40 minutes. Under similar conditions, Lumoz successfully reduced the average transaction confirmation time from about 5-6 minutes to about 3 minutes, increasing the ZKP generation efficiency by about 80%.
As more and more ZK-Rollups and miners participate, the demand and supply scale of the ZKP computing power market will continue to expand, making the efficiency improvements provided by Lumoz's PoW algorithm more significant.
3.2 ZK-RaaS: Solving Development Thresholds
Generate ZK-Rollup with one click
ZK-RaaS (ZK-Rollup as a Service) provided by Lumoz provides a one-click ZK-Rollup generation service for all users.
Lumoz provides a universal ZK-Rollup launchpad that enables developers to easily deploy different types of ZK-Rollups to different base chains.
These base chains include Ethereum, Lumoz chain, BNB chain, Polygon PoS and other public chains.
Types of ZK-Rollup (zkEVM) include zkSync, Polygon zkEVM, Scroll, StarkNet and other zkEVM, as well as various other ZK-Rollups.
Easily manage ZK-Rollup
Lumoz deploys a Rollup System Contract (RSC) on each base chain to manage the life cycle of the Rollup on that chain, including registration, suspension, and revocation.
By leasing a Rollup slot using a certain amount of MOZ (Lumoz native token), developers can own a ZK-Rollup.
The concept of Rollup slots is similar to slots in Polkadot or application chains in Cosmos. However, Cosmos' application chains need to maintain their own consensus layer and cross-chain bridges, which poses a greater security risk. In contrast, ZK-Rollup applies ZK technology to mathematically ensure the sharing of the consensus and data availability layer between Rollup and the base chain. This approach is safer, more decentralized, and has lower maintenance costs.
After leasing a Rollup slot, developers gain an independent execution environment and can own a unique ZK-Rollup chain. Developers have full control over ZK-Rollup and customize its economic model, including the choice of GAS tokens. They can freely adjust the GAS fee, or even set it to zero, making it free for users to use.
low cost
Developers do not need to bear any hardware costs. All hardware resources, such as data availability, serializers, and ZKP computing power, are provided and decentralized by the Lumoz ZK-PoW cloud.
Interoperability
Local cross-Rollup communication can be achieved between different ZK-Rollups on different base chains. This is a message communication mechanism that enables an address on one Rollup to interact directly with a contract on another Rollup. This feature greatly solves the fragmentation problem of user assets and enhances interoperability between applications.
3.3 Lumoz Chain: Further Optimizing ZK-Rollup Built on Lumoz
Lumoz chain is one of the basic chains supported by Lumoz. It adopts a hybrid consensus model of PoS and PoW. It not only supports Lumoz ZK-PoW cloud, but also provides further optimization for ZK-Rollup.
Optimizing ZK-Rollup performance
These optimizations include using precompiled contracts to accelerate ZKP verification, data sharding support, and PoS consensus based on ETH 2.0. In the future, support for EIP-4844, DankSharding, and other fully sharded solutions will also be expanded, which may reduce the GAS cost of Rollup to near zero.
A decentralized sequencer solution
Let the block proposers of the Lumoz chain also propose blocks for the Rollup layer, effectively separating the roles of builders and proposers.
Builders gain support through a permissionless P2P network, while proposers rely on the block proposers of the Lumoz chain. This approach eliminates the availability risk of a single node while maintaining resistance to Miner Extractable Value (MEV) and censorship.
The Lumoz chain provides a standardized decentralized serialization mechanism where block proposers also propose blocks for Rollup. In this way, ZK-Rollup inherits not only the security from higher layers, but also its degree of decentralization.
In the Lumoz chain: Lumoz allows anyone who holds Lumoz tokens to become a validator, and validators can receive block rewards and gas fees from the Lumoz chain.
In the Rollup layer:
PoS (Serializer): Validators propose blocks in the Lumoz chain and the Rollup layer (i.e., data batches). Therefore, they also act as sequencers in the Rollup layer, where they can earn GAS fees from transactions.
PoW (Prover): Any individual with sufficient computing power to perform ZKP calculations can become a prover in the Rollup layer. According to the PoW rules, the prover generates zk proofs from the Rollup layer blocks submitted by the serializer.
ZK-Rollup is similar to a computer, where the hard disk represents the data availability provided by PoS, and the CPU reflects the computing power granted by PoW.
The mission of the Lumoz chain is to strike a balance between PoS and PoW, enabling all participants to maximize their contributions and benefits, thereby improving the performance and user experience of large-scale ZK-Rollup networks.
0 4 Market structure and Lumoz’s unique entry point
Looking at the RaaS and modularization tracks, the current market competition has become fierce. The settlement layer is already a game for big players such as ETH, Optimism, and Arbitrum;
For interoperability, there are asset cross-chain bridges such as Mini Bridge, Orbiter, and Connext, as well as cross-chain communication projects such as Layzero and Chainlink CCIP;
The DA layer has been dominated by Celestia, EigenDA and other projects. At the Rollup stack level, most Rollup projects and even RaaS providers rely heavily on development kits provided by L2 such as Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, and zkSync, which has also led to the homogenization of RaaS projects that are purely development tools.
At the decentralized sorter level, emerging projects such as Altlayer and Espresso have gained first-mover advantages.
Homogeneity and oligopoly are the more obvious characteristics of the RaaS and modular tracks. New projects need to have unique entry points and forward-looking layouts to break through.
The combination of computing power modules and RaaS launched by Lumoz can solve a series of pain points of ZK-Rollup in one stop, and promote the rapid popularization of ZK-Rollup.
Currently, in the ZK-Rollup RaaS segment, Lumoz is already a leading "integrated" platform. As the penetration rate of ZK-Rollup increases, Lumoz will have great potential to grow into the most dazzling player in the ZK-Rollup segment.
At the level of comparable projects, it is reasonable to compare Lumoz to AltLayer in the ZK track. AltLayer and Lumoz have similar positioning, neither of which is a pure RaaS project, but empowers RaaS through a certain feature, providing customers with more comprehensive services, thereby gaining an advantageous market position.
(Source: Binance Research)
AltLayer has achieved a certain market position by empowering RaaS through a heavy-staking sequencer based on EigenLayer. Lumoz helps ZK-Rollup projects solve computing problems after launch by sharing ZK computing power.
(https://docs.altlayer.io/altlayer-documentation)
AltLayer's current MC has reached 670 million US dollars, and its FDV has exceeded 5.3 billion US dollars. AltLayer's market performance demonstrates the high value capture of the RaaS track. Similarly, Lumoz, as the current leading player in the ZK RaaS track, will surely achieve good market performance when ZK-Rollup explodes by integrating ZK computing power and RaaS services.
0 5Project Background
Lumoz's predecessor was Opside, and its past business was also a ZK-RaaS platform. On April 8 this year, Lumoz disclosed that it had completed a new round of financing with a valuation of US$120 million, with participation from OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, KuCoin Ventures and others.
So far, Lumoz has raised $10 million in funding. The third round of funding has already begun, and some institutions have confirmed their participation.
(Source: https://www.rootdata.com/Projects/detail/Lumoz?k=NTkxMQ%3D%3D)
Lumoz was able to quickly gain a leading edge in the ZK computing module and gain support from many leading institutions due to its deep experience in ZK technology and PoW mining resources.
Before launching Lumoz, the team also participated in two ZK mining projects, 6block and zk.Work, demonstrating its leading position in ZK mining.
(Source: https://6block.com/)
(Source: https://zkp.6block.com/)
0 6 Progress and Planning
With the support of excellent technology and resources, Lumoz has promoted the birth of many cutting-edge ETH L2 and BTC L2, such as ZKFair and Merlin Chain.
ZKFair: https://zkfair.io/
Merlin Chain: https://merlinchain.io/
The rapid rise of these projects shows that Lumoz's solid technical capabilities have been recognized by the market.
Currently, Lumoz Chain, the core component of Lumoz, is in the Alpha Testnet stage. Its mainnet is scheduled to be launched in July this year, and token generation is expected to be in August.
Lumoz attaches great importance to the construction of the ecosystem and the feedback from early users. Since August last year, Lumoz has launched the Gala Event, an incentive test network event that lasted for 4 months and achieved excellent results.
The Gala Event attracted nearly 700,000 community users to participate in the event, while 25,000 PoS nodes participated in network verification, and 145 miner entities contributed hash power to Lumoz. In addition, there are 15 zkEVM projects running stably based on the Lumoz chain.
(Source: https://twitter.com/LumozOrg/status/1740925588003840194)
Currently, Lumoz is still continuing to carry out Dragon Slayer activities with ZKFair and Glaxe to encourage user participation. It is currently in the third phase of the activity, which will issue 25M Lumoz points and more than 8,000 USDC rewards.
Within 24 hours of the launch of the third phase of the event, more than 147,000 users participated, which shows the popularity of the event and users' confidence in Lumoz.
Lumoz is expected to be launched on the mainnet in Q3. Currently, you can participate in Lumoz early through the Dragon Slayer event.
Event Link:
https://dragon-slayer.zkfair.io/
(Source: https://twitter.com/ZKFCommunity/status/1775014125263003766)
0 7 Conclusion and Outlook
As ZK-related technologies mature, ZK-Rollup will gain a significant market share in the future Ethereum expansion market.
Lumoz’s advanced judgment of the pain points and needs faced by ZK-Rollup has made it a pioneer and leader in this field. Judging from the popularity of various activities, it is not difficult to see that users have expressed full recognition of Lumoz.
With the Lumoz team's prediction of the market and deep relevant resources, we believe that Lumoz can become a leader in the ZK-RaaS track and promote the large-scale application of ZK-Rollup. Let us look forward to Lumoz's subsequent performance.
