Contrary to the trend, it raised 12 million US dollars and was selected by Sequoia. What is the origin of Taiko, a Type-1 zkEVM rookie?

Written by: umede.eth

Compilation: Odaily Planet Daily jk

Editor's Note: According to Odaily Planet Daily, on June 8, Taiko, the second-tier Ethereum network based on zkRollup, completed two rounds of seed financing totaling US$22 million. The first round of financing is US$10 million, led by Sequoia China, and will close in the third quarter of 2022. The most recent $12 million Series A funding round was led by Generative Ventures.

If you've followed the zero-knowledge proof Ethereum scene for a bit, you've probably heard the names Polygon, Starkware, Scroll, and zkSync.

In fact, you've probably not only heard of them, but seen them on Twitter debating all sorts of issues: what is the true definition of zkEVM, who was/is/will be deploying zkEVM for the first time on Ethereum mainnet, who's in marketing Better, and other important and not-so-important issues.

Regardless of your view on their arguments, all of these projects are working hard to scale Ethereum.

But there's a new player emerging, one that's relatively low-key but just as viable as the others. This new player is Taiko — a zkEVM that aims to be a fully decentralized, zero-knowledge scaling equivalent of Ethereum. As far as I know, no other zkEVM team is currently attempting to achieve this feat, so I think Taiko deserves special attention.

Let's see what Taiko is all about.

background

Taiko ("drum" in Japanese) was founded in early 2022 by Daniel Wang, Brecht Devos and other big names in the field. Before starting Taiko, the duo worked at Loopring, the first zero-knowledge rollup deployed on Ethereum.

I think it's important to quickly understand the role Loopring played in Taiko's creation and development. Originally, the zkEVM Taiko was building had to be part of Loopring's effort to bring zero-knowledge proof-powered Ethereum to the masses.

However, sometime during the development phase, Wnag and his team realized that confusing the two could be quite confusing, since Loopring is an app-specific extension, while Taiko is intended to be a general-purpose extension. As a result, Taiko separated from Loopring and developed independently.

Taiko currently consists of about 20 employees from countries such as Turkey, Austria, Barbados, China, India, USA, Canada, Ukraine, etc.

technical details

Type-1 zkEVM

The main feature that differentiates Taiko from its competitors (or rather, peers) is its aim to be a Type-1 zkEVM. Type-1's zkEVM strives to be fully equivalent to Ethereum, meaning it makes no changes to the Ethereum system to make it easier to generate zero-knowledge proofs.

Before diving in, it's important to note that Taiko's zkEVM is a fork of the community effort of the Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) team. Taiko uses this fork to test new stuff and then contribute to PSE's zkEVM so that any project that is developing a Type-1 zkEVM (not yet) can benefit from this research.

Type-1 zkEVM hopes to be fully compatible with Ethereum. In the case of Taiko, it intends to be the equivalent of Ethereum at the opcode level, meaning that hash functions, precompiled contracts, transaction and state trees, and other consistency logic will not change. However, as noted in Taiko’s white paper, the protocol does currently disable certain Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), but this will change over time.

Becoming the equivalent of Ethereum brings many developer benefits. For example, developers can seamlessly migrate their smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) to Taiko. This is very important because if a dApp like Uniswap wants to migrate to Taiko, it doesn't need to make any changes to its protocol. Otherwise, rewriting the code into a different programming language than Solidity or making other changes would immediately introduce multiple risks to the security of the protocol, as well as the assets on it.

Beyond that, in the case of Taiko, compatibility has been further enhanced. The Taiko client is based on the battle-tested Ethereum client Go-Ethereum. This means they are more familiar and easier to use for those looking to participate. From an end-user perspective, the ability to use Uniswap on Taiko vs. the Ethereum mainnet maintains, and even improves, consistency, accessibility, and user satisfaction.

Of course, there are some trade-offs to be made in pursuing the perfect compatibility path. The main challenge with type-1 zkEVMs like Taiko is slower zero-knowledge proof generation. Since Ethereum was not designed with the integration of zero-knowledge proofs in mind, many parts of the protocol require a lot of computation to generate zero-knowledge proofs.

However, proper protocol design can alleviate this problem. Let's see how Taiko can speed up the generation of zero-knowledge proofs.

Accelerating zero-knowledge proof generation

Taiko speeds up the generation of zero-knowledge proofs in several ways:

All proposed blocks on Taiko L2 are validated immediately because they are deterministic and cannot be revoked. "Deterministic" means that anyone can calculate the state of the chain after execution. It only needs to pass the intrinsic validity test once when the L2 block is submitted to Taiko L1 to be considered verified.

Since all Taiko L2 proposal blocks are deterministic, they can be proven in parallel, and proofs can be committed in any order. For example, prover #1 can verify block #1 at the same time, and prover #2 can verify block #2 at the same time. This means that only the Taiko L1 has to wait longer for proof.

All of these can speed up the generation of zero-knowledge proofs to a certain extent. For end users, this means instant finality on L2, and faster bridging from L2 to L1.

Taiko Collaborate

Taiko’s zero-knowledge protocol deploys two smart contracts on the Ethereum mainnet (L1) and Taiko L2:

• L1 smart contracts are used to propose, prove and verify L2 blocks.
• L2 smart contracts are currently used to prove the invalidity of proposed blocks and anchor them, a way for the protocol to leverage the programmability of the EVM to enforce certain protocol behaviors.

zkSNARKs

The Taiko protocol uses Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zkSNARK) proofs. At least in theory, zkSNARKs are considered less scalable than zkSTARKs and require a trusted setup process. However, zkSNARKs are more lightweight than zkSTARKs and thus take less time to verify. And zkSNARK requires less gas, providing cheaper transactions.

To generate zkSNARKs, Taiko uses the Lagrangian cardinality-based Global No Interaction Proof of Knowledge (PLONK) proof system. The advantage of PLONK is that it relies on standard cryptography and its proofs are small in size. However, Taiko is also investigating the possibility of combining PLONK with other proof systems such as Plonky 2, Hyperplonk, and Halo.

The Taiko network consists of three participants:

1. The proposer builds a Rollup block based on the L2 user's transactions and submits it to the Taiko L1 client. They decide which transactions are included in a block and how to order them.
2. The prover generates zkSNARK proofs to confirm the validity of L2 transactions and blocks. They decide which blocks should be verified on-chain.
3. Node operators execute transactions from on-chain data to stay in sync with the state of the chain. Proposers and provers also run nodes, but those who want to provide other services (such as block explorers) also need to run a node.

Taiko L2 point

Taiko's L2 nodes fetch transaction data from Ethereum and execute those transactions on Taiko L2. As we mentioned before, Taiko's L2 nodes are based on Go-Ethereum.

Please read Taiko's white paper for more detailed technical details.

Current Progress

Taiko recently launched its first test network, called Snæfellsjökull, after a volcano in western Iceland. Users can test Taiko by testing bridges between Ethereum A1 and Taiko A1, transferring tokens between different accounts, interacting with contracts, and running proposer nodes.

Snæfellsjökull volcano. Source: Icelandic Mag.

From a testing standpoint, the testnet was a huge success. In just over a week, the Taiko L2 network has processed over 1.6 million transactions, over 650,000 blocks, and 275,000 wallet addresses. Snæfellsjökull can be said to have exploded.

Source: explorer.a 1.taiko.xyz.

The Taiko team intends to phase out Snæfellsjökull over the next few months and replace it with a new test network that will use zero-knowledge proof technology. Further testnets will improve on previous versions and implement token economic models.

Taiko did not specify when its mainnet launch would happen, but mentioned late 2023 or next year as more likely.

Taiko's Faith

Although Taiko is quite different in technical design from other zkEVMs in this field, its pursuit is also worth discussing.

Taiko claims that it wants to be accessible, inclusive, open, permissionless, and decentralized. In fact, it hopes to be able to go live with a fully decentralized set of proposers and provers. This differs from other zkEVMs as most of them choose to start with centralization and gradually become decentralized.

Taiko believes that being fully decentralized and pursuing the same goals as Ethereum is a must to become an Ethereum equivalent. Beyond that, the team intends to launch a DAO sometime in the future. Co-founder Wang also said that Taiko hopes to operate as a non-profit organization.

Reading about Taiko's values can't help but feel very avant-garde, almost revolutionary. This reminds me of zkSync's mission statement. I hope Taiko will deliver on its promise and become the first fully decentralized type-1 zkEVM to land on Ethereum mainnet.

Conclusion

Type-1 zkEVM has its advantages and disadvantages. But what if its disadvantages are negligible relative to the advantages it offers? What if the Ethereum equivalent, seemingly the highest standard, combined with existing and potential ways to accelerate zero-knowledge proof generation, really makes Type-1 zkEVM a long-term winner? There are still many unknowns, but at least Vitalik seems to imply that a Type-1-like zkEVM is the right choice.

As for Taiko, I think it found the right place at the right time. 2023 seems to be a year reserved for Build. If Taiko achieves its goals and launches its mainnet this year or early next year, it could be one of the big winners in the next adoption cycle.

Taiko is clearly on his own, trying to achieve extraordinary feats. Whether it will succeed is another question, but judging by what Wang and his team have achieved with the Loopring, the odds seem to be on their side. If Taiko wins, Ethereum will also be a winner.