The new ZK research by a16z marks a notable milestone for the venture, which has taken a more active role in recent years. Developing some core technologies Keep up with venture-backed companies. These projects are also the company's first foray into deep technology research, highlighting the company's growing influence over the technology it funds.
The team's first project, Lasso, proposes a new way to speed up ZK systems. The project's white paper was co-authored by Microsoft researcher Srinath Setty and Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Riad Wahby, along with his colleague Justin Thaler of a16z. The team released his Lasso code under an open source license. This means that external developers can use his Lasso in their own projects.
The second project, Jolt, introduces a type of zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) using Lasso. Jolt is just a research paper at this point, but a16z says they plan to release a code version of it under an open source license in the near future.
Because so many of a16z's portfolio companies rely on ZK technology, the company is betting that its contributions will play a role in helping those companies succeed, thereby helping its own bottom line. Contributing to open source also increases A16Z's reputation among developers and builders, which could be a key differentiator when competing with other companies for lead deals. there is.
ZK proofs are a cryptographic tool that can be applied outside of blockchains, but have gained increasing interest in recent years due to their applicability to scaling blockchains. These have recently become the go-to way to reduce blockchain fees, increase speed, and protect the privacy of transactions.
ZK proofs “extend the blockchain by simply doing the hard work off-chain and having the proofs verified by the blockchain,” said A16Z researcher and associate at Georgetown University, co-author of the Lasso and Jolt study. Professor Thaler said. Using ZK proofs “gives us assurance that this work has been done correctly, but not every blockchain node in the world will do all the work.”
ZK's “lookup argument”, Lasso, is provided by a16z as an improvement to one of its internal components. ZK-SNARK – The fundamental building blocks that underpin most ZK-based crypto projects.
According to a16z, Lasso delivers “approximately 10x speedup over lookup arguments in the popular and well-designed halo2 toolchain. Once optimizations are complete, approximately 40x improvement is expected. ” (Halo2 is a popular open source tool built by the team behind Zcash, a ZK-based blockchain focused on private transactions.)
Alongside Lasso, a16z is also releasing open source code for Jolt, a new approach to building zero-knowledge virtual machines (zkVMs). A virtual machine is a computer that runs entirely in software rather than hardware and serves as the basis for most blockchains. A virtual machine is like a giant computer that allows anyone to read and write files. ZkVM is a VM equipped with ZK technology and is used when security and privacy are paramount to the operation of the VM.
One type of zkVM, the so-called zkEVM, has become the primary recipient of a16z venture money as it powers the new class of Ethereum “layer 2” scaling chains currently being talked about in cryptocurrency developer circles. Masu. According to DefiLlama, the initial versions of these chains rolled out to users over the past year have already generated more than $1 billion in user deposits.
a16z says that Jolt provides a general-purpose framework for building certain types of zkVMs that are easy to debug.
“Compared to existing SNARK VMs, we expect Jolt to achieve similar or better performance and, importantly, a more streamlined and accessible developer experience.” said a16z in a statement.
Correction (August 10th 19:50 UTC): Added names of contributors Srinath Setty and Riad Wahby. I would like to clarify that the code for a16z for Jolt has not been released yet.
