Taiko's Inaugural「Based Rollup Summit」: Top 10 Key Highlights

2025-03-25 09:59

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Source: Taiko

Taiko, the first fully decentralized Based Rollup solution within the Ethereum ecosystem, successfully hosted the inaugural Based Rollup Summit in San Francisco. The event brought together Ethereum core developers, Layer 2 solution providers, Web3 infrastructure builders, and DeFi experts to discuss
the pivotal role of Based Rollups in enhancing Ethereum's scalability, reducing transaction costs, and strengthening network security.

Held at the Exploratorium, a renowned museum blending technology, science, and art, the summit featured in-depth technical discussions and interactive sessions aimed at driving the adoption and implementation of Based Rollup technology.

Here are 10 key takeaways from the thought leaders during the summit.

1. Technical Insights and Architectural Innovations in Based Rollups

Joaquin Mendes, Taiko's Chief Operating Officer, opened upthe day with a rundown of the basics of based rollups, their opportunities, and
challenges.

「This is a unique opportunity to learn about the topics that will be key for the future of Ethereum.」

2. AI Verifiability: Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) and Blockchain Integration

Professor Dan Boneh, Co-founder at Stanford Blockchain Research, answered Taiko's Head of GamingPiergiacomo Palmisani's question on verifiability and AI focusing on provenance. He specifically dug into C2PA, the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, an effort to address the concerns of AI-generated fake or misleading information.

「The idea is basically that every content will have a signature saying where it came from. So when you take a picture, your camera will have a secret key
embedded in it that will sign the picture. When you're using a Gen AI model in the cloud to generate a video, that Gen AI model will sign the video to say this was generated by my model…So effectively every piece of content in the future is going to have a C2PA attestation. And if a certain piece of content does not have an attestation, it's simply going to be dropped..So if you try to upload to YouTube a video that does not have a C2PA attestation, YouTube is just not going to show anybody…We have to move into that kind of world because otherwise you just have no idea where the content came from.」

3. Vitalik Buterin』s Vision for Based Rollups

Vitalik Buterin, Founder of Ethereum, shared his vision for how based rollups contribute to the best outcome for Ethereum. Buterin praised Taiko for its innovative work on based rollups and highlighted how projects like Taiko are promoting the future of Ethereum scalability.

[The best case scenario] is an Ethereum-based social network that's open, free, and free of monopolist gatekeepers...Let's use the 10,000 TPS projects like Taiko will bring us, and make it happen.」

4. Ethereum's Long-Term Vision: A Rollup-Centric Future

Tomasz Stanczak, Nethermind founder and incoming Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, on his ideal outcome for Ethereum long-term. Taiko has been working with Nethermind to deploy an open-source Rollup stack, allowing others to build and develop scaling options for Ethereum with a based rollup design. This ensures the future of Ethereum remains as decentralized as possible.

「The future where Ethereum is that coordination layer and we stop thinking about chain to chain and every single economic activity in the world allows anyone to participate and you have full human to human privacy at least because I think human to machine might be impossible and every single point of attention and any resource allocation goes through lower case 『ethereum』 network and it becomes very natural and very human friendly.」

5. Preconfirmations: A Breakthrough for Transaction Finality

Taiko's engineer Jeff Walsh showed the audience a clear example of how preconfirmations will do for transactions on Taiko's based rollup featuring preconfirmed transactions going live through Taiko's current partner Gattaca.

「We're the first based rollup but we'll also be the first people with decentralized and permissioned but multiple groups of preconfirmations.」

6. Cross-Chain Interoperability: Challenges and Opportunities

Keyao Shen, a Senior Engineer from Espresso, brought in-depth details on how to unify Ethereum, an issue that was a recurring theme during the day and something Taiko considers to be part of the benefit of based rollup design in the long term. She expressly discussed how the current position we find ourselves in results in some not taking Ethereum's security seriously.

「We see we are in this 『good times create weak protocols』 era, and we need to fix this. How do we fix this? By removing a single point of failure and to make interop protocols stronger.」

7. Redefining Based Rollups: A Broader Perspective

Harry Gao, Co-Founder of Luban, challenged what exactly it means to be a based rollup. Building off the specifics of Justin Drake's definition, he proposed that technical implications mean there is a need for a wider scope beyond simply using the L1 for sequencing.

「It might be, at least internally, that we loosen up the definition of based rollup…it might be that a rollup is said to be based when its core operation is driven by credible commitments from the base L1.」

8. The Evolution of Based Rollups: From Single-Chain Optimization to Multi-Chain Coordination

Irfan Shaik, Founder of Interstate, broke down how based rollups work and how we got to the point where we are in their development today. He focused on preconfirmations, this technical development, which Taiko will likely be the first to implement on chain, aims to make transaction finality on based rollups faster, enabling them to compete with the current rollup stack.

「Effectively based rollups have a key limitation that the L2 and L1 blocktimes are the same…Preconfirmations reduce the block time of the L2… it's an early guarantee of a future inclusion.」

9. Building the Based Rollup Ecosystem: A Coordinated Ethereum Evolution

Cecilia Zhang, Engineer at Taiko, shared why building a based rollup isn't just a decision for one chain but rather for all of them.

「Being based is a very natural engineering development. If we see [the state of] fragmentation now, it comes naturally that this is the right thing to do.」

10. Looking Ahead to 2025: Breakthroughs in Zero-Knowledge Cryptography

Jay Yu, President of Stanford Blockchain Club and Associate at Pantera, provided a look into the future, of what people can expect from crypto development in 2025. He focused on how zero-knowledge is going to be one of the key technologies to drive more development for crypto and web3. Taiko is already working to fully incorporate zk-proofs on its chain.

「I think it's the acceleration of frontier cryptography research. Over the past few years, we've seen zk really take off, and now we have zk provers and all of the infrastructure… It's exciting to see how entrepreneurs can build businesses out of these new cryptographic primitives and push forward this new verifiable internet.」

Conclusion

The successful inaugural Based Rollup Summit has laid a strong foundation for the future of Based Rollup technology. The next Based Rollup Summit is scheduled for July 2025 in Cannes, France, alongside EthCC—stay tuned for more updates!