Ecosystem developer, ConsenSys launches zkEVM private beta testnet, the software has received over 150,000 signups so far.
ConsenSys, revealed the zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) network on December 13 in a blog post for private beta testing. Developers can install and maintain decentralized apps using tools like MetaMask, Truffle, and Infura as if they were directly using the EVM, which is designed and run by ecosystem developer.
Additionally, users can test their smart contracts and decentralized applications, or DApps, by bridging assets between the Goerli testnet and the zkEVM.
“Testnet participants can also bridge tokens, transfer tokens, and interact with deployed dApps listed on our upcoming ecosystem portal page. We intend to learn whether the developer experience of the zkEVM has the potential to accelerate innovation in Web3 and will be evaluating feedback from the community to inform our next step.”
ConsenSys has been working for years to build a zkEVM by encapsulating EVM computation in zero-knowledge proofs as opposed to building zk-Rollups on networks apart from the EVM.
With zero-knowledge technology, transactions are verified on a different layer, and computation is sent back to Ethereum without sending all of the data. Ethereum developers estimate that rollup solutions like Optimism can boost scalability by as much as 100x by simply providing verification that everything was correctly computed on layer 2 and adding a brief proof back to the blockchain.
In January 2023, user onboarding for the new ConsenSys zkEVM will start. According to ecosystem developer, it is presently unknown how early testers would be compensated or whether a newly created token will be connected to the zkEVM.
