3 minutes to learn about StarkEx, the expansion engine of Ethereum, which demonstrates the Reddit points system
Vitalik popular science said that this does not belong to the Rollup plan, but Validium.
Written by: LeftOfCenter
The zero-knowledge proof R&D institution StarkWare conducted a capacity expansion demonstration for the Reddit points system, using a capacity expansion technology called StarkEx. StarkWare called it a ZK-Rollup capacity expansion engine.
In this demo, the StarkEx expansion plan created 1.3 million accounts and deposited initial funds for all users of the “FortNiteBR” sub-section of Reddit on the Ethereum mainnet in a trustless manner, and effectively showed how The cost of gas charges enables these tokens to be brought to the mainnet. This interaction does not require trust and is supported by a series of STARK certifications and status commitments submitted to the Ethereum mainnet.
StarkEx expansion plan can reduce Ethereum Gas fee by 30%
According to the on-chain data released by StarkWare, StarkEx sends all Reddit sub-sections to the Ethereum mainnet. The average transfer price for each transaction is 600 gas fees, which is 30% lower than the average price during the same period.
This test took about 12 hours and only occupied part of the Ethereum network, about 2.5% . Therefore, it did not cause network congestion. In contrast, if the same operation is performed directly on the main Ethereum network, it will take 4.5 days even if the entire network is occupied.
StarkEx reduces Ethereum Gas fees by 30%
In addition, in this demonstration, StarkEx’s expansion plan was used to achieve token transfer and transaction .
According to StarkEx’s description, a total of 2⁶⁰ ERC-20 token Mocks were mined in this test , and then stored in a smart contract representing a subreddit.
Next, StarkEx transfers these newly minted token assets to the off-chain account of the “subreddit vault” without trust. In this case, each batch of token transfer refers to the transfer of tokens from a certain subsection of Reddit The administrator account is transferred to a personal account under this section. In this test, a total of 159 batch token transfers were performed, and each batch included 8,192 transfers . For each batch of transfer operations, a STARK certificate is generated to prove the integrity of the batch, and the off-chain Merkle tree of the account balance is updated.
Then, these proofs (in 13 independent transactions, the average transaction cost is 380,000 gas fees, and each proof is a total of 4.94 million gas fees.) And then sent to the chain, with a commitment (commitment) updated to Merkle’s In the tree state.
Calculated in this way, a single transaction requires 603 gas fee (4.94 million gas fee / 8192 transmissions). In order not to burden the already congested mainnet, StarkEx submitted a total of 2067 transactions (submitted in 13 batches, 159 transactions per batch).
StarkEx is not a Rollup solution?
The technology has also attracted the attention of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, and asked through Twitter comments, which kind of expansion solution is this, Rollup or Plasma?
After the explanation of StarkEx’s product Avihu Levy, Vitalik did not think it belonged to Rollup , and adopted the suggestion of StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson, which was more appropriate to call it “Validium” . “Validium” means “valid” in Latin.
Vitalik believes that the Validium solution can be called “zk Rollup for off-chain data version” or “Plasma for Snarks version” . However, he said that in the future, “zk Rollup” could also be renamed to “Validium Rollup” or similar names.
According to an Ethernet-based zero-knowledge proof of Square 2 Expansion Project ZK-Sync Matter Labs team behind the development of science and zkRollup Validium (StarkEx belongs to a class of Validium) of the main Layer, difference is that:
zk Rollup : Keep the data on the chain , as long as there is at least one Ethereum full node, its security can be guaranteed.
Validium : Keep the data off- chain . The premise of ensuring security is that at least one of the n licensed data notaries is honest.
The Validium solution allows each user to download the off-chain data on their own. In this case, it still needs to be exited before it can be restored, in case the operator is suddenly or permanently offline.
Vitalik Buterin believes that the advantage of the Validium expansion plan is that its effectiveness verification for off-chain data systems can greatly simplify the logic of the exit mechanism and allow arbitrary execution within the second layer. But the flaw is that this will cause a delay in withdrawal , so Vitalik believes that the Validium program is far less than the zk Rollup program .
After the science popularization, we understand that StarkWare calls StarkEx “a kind of zk rollup” totally unreasonable. In this regard, Wang Dong, founder of the Luyin Agreement, said that he has always regarded StarkWare as a competitor, but their technology is not, which means that users must trust their alliance to protect assets and cannot achieve the same level of security as the Ethereum mainnet.
Article reference:
https://medium.com/starkware/with-starkex-ethereum-is-ready-for-reddit-3b2966d5203b
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1267455602764251138
