Bangkok Devcon Chronicle: ZK Ignites the "Prove Anything" Grand Narrative

Original Author: Haotian, Crypto Researcher

These days I participated in joint Proof Summit organized by @eigenlayer, @RiscZero's Provable, ZKHub initiated by @ProjectZKM and @GOATRollup, and ZK Accelerate, among others. There were quite a few events, and it was impossible to attend all of them. But all the events I attended were in the "ZK realm," and after going through them, I feel like I've been infected by the ZK bug and I'm very enthusiastic about it.

A Flashback to the ICO Era: From Onchain anything to Prove anything

I remember during the ICO boom in 2017, there was a flourishing scene of "anything can be put on the blockchain" where various industries explored scenarios like medical records on the chain, end-to-end traceability of agricultural products from planting to the dining table, and supply chain financing on the chain. Although it was later proven that not all scenarios could be put on the chain and not all scenarios needed to be, the narrative paradigm of Onchain anything fueled the prosperity of the 2017 bull market.

After going through these major ZK-focused events, I also have a similar feeling that ZK is unleashing a grand narrative of "Prove anything."

The true value of ZK lies in the separation of off-chain computation and on-chain verification, allowing off-chain computation to achieve optimal computational efficiency, thereby minimizing on-chain storage and execution costs. ZK Tech, as a "trusted bridge," connects everything.

Looking back, the past two cycles have tended to tell the story of "on-chain," where Rollup Layer 2 is just the tip of the iceberg in showing the value of ZK. After the ZK explosion, there will be no distinction between on-chain and off-chain, and in the future, there will only be a new paradigm of "verifiable computation."

At the same time, innovative explorations of Prove Anything are quietly igniting, covering various applications involving both off-chain and on-chain scenarios such as verifiable computation games, identity verification, DeFi/RWA, privacy transactions, voting governance, AI model verification, trustworthy proofs of IoT devices, enterprise-level supply chain privacy guarantees, and more.

The AVS Economic Consensus System's Significance for ZK

At the Proof Summit, I saw many exciting projects such as @alt_layer aiming to create a VITAL ZK proof system to provide ZK proof capabilities for OP-Rollup; @alignedlayer focusing on scalable ZK proof generation, exploring effective integration with the OP Stack; @OpacityNetwork exploring data privacy and secure sharing infrastructure based on VDN, zkTLS, MPC; @lagrangedevprover Network aiming to establish a dedicated proof service layer between L1 and L2 to provide a unified shared proof infrastructure for different ZK proofs.

I have previously analyzed Eigenlayer and its AVS service paradigm representing the future of Ethereum, if it was just speculation at that time. At this conference, I received validation that altlayer's refinement for OP Fraud Proof needs to be based on AVS, and Lagrange's unified proof service layer consensus needs to rely on AVS.

The "secure consensus" offered by AVS's commodifiable encapsulated output will help ZK rapidly build a number of middleware protocol service networks, assisting a series of rapidly emerging ZK infrastructures and existing pure on-chain VM environments in achieving interoperability.

Needless to say, everyone can also feel that within the AVS actively validated service system initiated by Eigenlayer, there are too many emerging ZK forces upstream and downstream. Although it still seems early now, let the bullets fly for a while.

TEE Gives Wings to ZK in Verifiable Execution Environments

This TEE Salon event is scheduled to last a whole day, and I didn't have time to finish listening. However, surprisingly, the event took place at Google's super cool office in Bangkok, and out of reverence for the world's internet giants, attending this event was quite exciting.

Google's Confidential Computing cloud product line, Intel's SGX, TDX technologies, etc., are eager to find a suitable entry point in the new TEE narrative. The logic is simple; just look at the ambiguous relationship Alibaba Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud have always had with blockchain.

In my opinion, ZK+TEE serves as the guardian of the verifiable computation era. ZK is responsible for computing proofs and validating information transfer, while TEE provides a trusted execution environment and data privacy.

For example, Aztec's dark pool, Fabric's upcoming VPU hardware innovation chip, and more and more projects are integrating ZK, TEE, as well as other MPC, FHE encryption algorithms to accelerate the arrival of a brand-new verifiable computation paradigm. Although TEE still feels too traditional, on the popular road of ZK, TEE will definitely lend a hand;

zkVM Propels the Mass Infrastructure for ZK Tech Popularity

Arriving at the zkHUB dedicated event, the overwhelming ZK projects like ZKM, RiscZERO, Cysic, Mina, Goat Network, Succinct, etc., make it a bit overwhelming. When I say overwhelming, it's not the concept of "too much," but rather the impressive coverage and depth of the upstream and downstream solutions.

Many people may have seen some innovations in the Risc-V virtual machine from @VitalikButerin's article. Here, I see @ProjectZKM's engineers explaining zkMIPS in the system, a generic zkVM that simplifies the ZK development process. It reduces the time and complexity of developing custom ZK circuits, providing a standardized platform for ZK application development.

Unlike Risc-V, which leans more towards hardware processor architecture, zkMIPS, a software-oriented streamlined instruction set, can greatly optimize the scenarios required for generating zero-knowledge proofs.

zkVM is quite extraordinary in a modular narrative context. Many people know that zkVM has more prospects than zkEVM. Its core logic lies in the fact that the future ZK will definitely depart from the original purely on-chain connectivity paradigm.

Therefore, zkVM, able to connect to all AltVMs, can make Ethereum, Bitcoin, and others become a unified settlement layer in a full-chain environment, building a unified liquidity layer across technological architecture restrictions, which is truly crucial.

I believe that in the narrative epilogue of EVM compatibility, the release of the new zkVM, enabling verifiable computation to connect everything, will be a sustained hot topic in the coming years.

That's all.

Finally, let's conclude with a quote from RiscZERO VP. He said that the blockchain we are in is transitioning from the "Server Era" represented by Ethereum and Solana to a brand-new "Cloud Era."

Placing this statement in the current blockchain development environment that is being dissected and restructured by "modularity," "chain abstraction," "zkVM," and others, you will definitely understand what this statement is advocating and promoting.

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