Blockchain
In such a short period after its mainnet launch, Layer 2 protocol zkSync has hit several outstanding milestones. Compared to other long-existing networks, the zk-rollup Ethereum (ETH) scaling solution has recorded more transactions than expected. Based on its latest Twitter post, the protocol has processed one million transactions within a 24 hour time span.
This milestone is a first for a zkEVM as the figure amounts to about 12 transactions per second. Notably, it makes zkSync the second top L2 network this period in terms of transaction count and next only to Ethereum.
Additionally, zkSync hit one million unique active dresses and one million Twitter followers. It is perceived that the jump in activity was contributed by certain apes airdrop, a project that is unrelated to the protocol.
Competing protocol Arbitrum (ARB) has had a similar increase in its activity but zkSync holds only $260 million in assets while ARB currently has up to $5 billion. Last month, zkSync Era onboarded decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch, and further surged higher than its closest rival Polygon zkEVM which launched its mainnet beta in late March.
zkSync Facilitates Faster and Cheaper Transactions
Sergej Kunz, 1inch co-founder stated that zkSync is a promising L2 solution which would offer its users faster and cheaper transactions.
“zkSync Era is a very promising L2 solution, and we are glad to be among the first projects to deploy on that network. As zkSync Era gains steam, 1inch users will benefit from faster and cheaper transactions,” Kunz said.
zkSync Era was released in March 2023 and it leverages the power of zero-knowledge rollups. Hence, users can complete transactions in ETH at a faster rate and for cheaper fees. During its deployment phase, several projects including Chainlink, SushiSwap, Uniswap, AaveAave, Argent, Gnosis and Curve Finance indicated interest in deploying on the network.
As part of the many benefits of the zkSync Era, the protocol supports native account abstraction including improved ERC-4337 account abstraction, LLVM compiler, data compression, and Hyperscalability.
However, less than a month after it mainnet launch, the ETH scaling solution malfunctioned and went down for close to 4 hours. During this time, no block was produced or added to the blockchain but after four hours, the zkSync Era Block Explorer showed normal block production.