The Block: zkSync head of product: Ethereum learning to scale will be like 'coming out of Plato's cave'

Episode 93 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Tim Copeland, VP of Research Larry Cermak and Matter Labs' Chief Product Officer Steve Newcomb.

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For the final installment of this three-part Ethereum Merge special edition of The Scoop, we take a closer look at zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups — technology that could enable Ethereum to scale to millions of transactions per second.

There are four main teams working on ZK-rollups: Polygon, Scroll, Starkware, and Matter Labs.

In this episode of The Scoop, Matter Labs Chief Product Officer Steve Newcomb shares what he believes to be the key ingredients of a good ZK-rollup, and why he believes scaling solutions will herald a new wave of innovation.

According to Newcomb, a paradigm shift will occur once Ethereum successfully scales:

“Once Ethereum can scale — and truly scale — it's kind of like coming out of Plato's cave and seeing the rest of the world, and seeing these use cases we could have never even predicted.”

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has stated he believes ZK-rollups will be the main layer-2 scaling solution in the future, largely because of the speed at which users can move funds between mainnet and the layer-2.

Newcomb also believes that ZK-rollups are “going to be the end game for scaling,” although he also stipulates that a good ZK-rollup should meet the following requirements:

“These five ingredients — having a generalized ZK-rollup, being EVM compatible, working with solidity, being truly open sourced, being correctly decentralized, and having good tokenomics — these are the key ingredients of what makes a good ZK-rollup a ZK-rollup.”

During this episode, Cermak, Copeland, and Newcomb also discuss:

How zkSync compares to other L2 scaling solutions Why ‘Layer 3s’ will lead to a “starfield of 10x moments” How ZK-rollups could eliminate non-native bridges This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Tron , Chainalysis &amp; IWC Schaffhausen

About Tron TRON is dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet via blockchain technology and decentralized applications (dApps). Founded in September 2017 by H.E. Justin Sun , the TRON network has continued to deliver impressive achievements since MainNet launch in May 2018. July 2018 also marked the ecosystem integration of BitTorrent , a pioneer in decentralized Web3 services boasting over 100 million monthly active users. The TRON network completed full decentralization in December 2021 and is now a community-governed DAO. | TRONDAO | Twitter | Discord |

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About IWC Schaffhausen IWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot’s Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com .

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