ZKSwap Undergoes Massive Rebranding & Technical Upgrade

ZKSwap is a layer 2 AMM DEX employing ZK-rollups technology. With the V2 upgrade, ZKSwap launched a new-look app interface, unlimited token listing, optimized circuit efficiency, smoother withdrawal processing, and multi-chain support services. Amid its massive rebranding and technical changes, ZKSwap looks to introduce NFT features, cross-chain interoperability, and more exciting layer2 products.

A Brief History of DEXs
Now considered an integral part of the DeFi revolution and building of Web3.0; decentralized exchanges have long been sources of poor user experience and frustration. DEXs allow for true P2P exchange of wealth and are representative of the core values of bitcoin.

First emerging on Ethereum following standard CLOB (central limit order book) design prevalent on most CEXs, DEXs such as Etherdelta and later, Forkdelta, were used as platforms for exchange after users had already agreed to trade terms somewhere else (Github, Reddit, telegram, etc.). After they began to grow in popularity, however, many users bypassed forums and went directly to the application itself, attempting to match single resting orders by out-bidding others on gas fees and competing against bots. The result left many frustrated and resulted in days where up to 30% of trades failed due to on-chain collisions.

Following on from Forkdelta, IDEX provided a better but more centralized solution of hosting order books offline in order to reduce gas wastage due to collisions. This worked well until Uniswap was launched in 2018 and took the crypto world by storm. As an AMM, Uniswap removed order books completely and instead popularized trading against a supply/demand curve.

Since the popularization of AMMs, many innovative DeFi protocols have taken different approaches to providing better services to attract more users. For example, Curve uses a formula that is better for single-sided staking assets against stable coins, and now Uniswap V3 has emerged for professional asset management, allowing users to concentrate their liquidity in different price ranges in order to enhance capital efficiency.

The ZKSwap Solution
Pioneering the DeFi industry in the utilization of ZK-rollups for a Layer 2 AMM DEX, ZKSwap offers users real-time 0 gas-fee private transactions. Transactions made on ZKSwap utilize the strong consensus security of the underlying Layer 1 blockchain whilst maintaining the privacy of zero-knowledge proof and requiring no gas fees. This solution is ideal for users or institutions looking to perform high-volume trades across a wide range of assets.

New to ZKSwap
With further details to be outlined in the incoming whitepaper, NFT support is one of the biggest changes coming to the protocol in the upgraded version of ZKSwap with the intention of becoming a benchmark for supporting Opensea on Layer 2. In addition to standard transactions, the new version of ZKSwap will support NFT transaction mining and liquidity mining in which users will share in a percentage of the transaction fees from the whole network. Similar to how users can generate and list their own Layer 2 ERC20 compliant tokens using ZKSwap v2.0, the upgraded version of ZKSwap will support NFT issuance, minting, and airdrops.

Also new, flexibility upgrades to the AMM formula will change how users use and interact with the DEX. These changes increase the variety of trading methods available, and for trading with stable coin pairings, the upgraded version of ZKSwap will closely resemble the Curve V1.0 model. Trading between non-stable coin assets will more closely resemble an improved version of Uniswap 3.0, which allows for determining limited price ranges to reduce loss via slippage if a trade were to drain the liquidity at one price range and therefore move into another. The upgraded version of ZKSwap achieves this innovation by using non-fungible ERC721 LP tokens and an internal oracle re-pegging mechanism.

Visually, the interface will see a number of upgrades, including a new-look block explorer, which will include deposit, withdrawal, transaction, and transfer information for tokens and the newly-supported NFTs on the new version of ZKSwap.

Stay Tuned
With many of the details still yet to be unveiled, the upgraded version of ZKSwap is set to be an innovative alternative to some of the existing DeFi platforms. 

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Moving forward, the team has plans to further expand NFT-related functionality and include batch mining, verification, mystery box auctions, bidding, and much more. The team is also looking to implement better cross-chain interoperability between different Layer 2’s, providing even faster and cheaper cross-chain services. Finally, ZKSwap will be working on more features and solutions for improved capital utilization and release a version of ZK-Rollups that is fully compatible with EVM in order to allow Dapp developers to join the ecosystem and build the future of ZKSwap together. Check out: https://zks.org 


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