ZK-Rollups Guide: ETH Scalability — and Why It’s the Next Big Narrative

Scalability is a major problem for Ethereum and most blockchain projects. As the number of computationally intensive processes on the main blockchain increases, it clogs up the network and makes transactions slow and expensive. This hurts user experience and the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole. However, there may be a solution to the scalability problem for Ethereum: ZK-Rollups. This article will introduce you to ZK-Rollups and their benefits and limitations, and compare them to other scaling solutions while examining the best ZK-Rollup coins.

What Are ZK-Rollups? 

ZK-Rollups, or zero-knowledge rollups, are smart contracts that implement Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions for more efficient transaction processing on the blockchain.

To understand ZK-Rollups, you must have a foundational knowledge of rollups in general and why they hold the key to Ethereum Layer 2 scalability solutions. Layer 2 solutions are based on a secondary chain instead of the mainchain.

Rollups are among the most popular Layer 2 solutions because they provide a high throughput (transactions per second), without sacrificing security or decentralization. They achieve this by moving computationally intensive processes from the Ethereum mainnet (Layer 1) to a sidechain (Layer 2). A rollup submits just enough data to the mainchain so that any participant can recreate the transaction states and detect invalidity or errors. Security isn’t compromised, since the transaction data is stored on the Ethereum mainchain.