ETH : Fees, ZK Protocol and.. SPACE ?? Things YOU Should KnowHi Traders, Investors and Speculators of the Chart📈📉
There are some exiting developments in the crypto space other than the bullish price action on charts. If you've been missing out on some of it, this one's for you!
Thanks to their distributed structure, blockchains tend to be slow. If a single transaction has to be verified across thousands of Ethereum’s nodes, this also makes the network expensive to use. Layer 2 systems are a potential answer to this issue, with rollups as the most popular scaling method. Zero-knowledge (ZK) rollups use the minimum data necessary to verify transactions by unburdening Ethereum from excess network workload. This makes Ethereum both faster and cheaper. Okay now hold up - wat is ZK?
In cryptography, a ZK or zero-proof protocol means one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true without giving any additional statement. To give a practical example; consider how you would have to prove your citizenship. If you say “I am Bob from Canada”, you would need to prove that with a legal document such as a passport, an identity document etc. The problem with this approach up until now, is privacy. This information is often shared to third parties without your consent. Identity theft also thrives in this environment.
So how could you prove that what you’re saying is true, without giving away any information or legal documents? Let’s take a look at this example provided by Wikipedia:
Imagine your friend is red-green color-blind (while you are not) and you have two balls: one red and one green, but otherwise identical. To your friend they seem completely identical and they are skeptical that they are actually distinguishable. You want to prove to them they are in fact differently-colored, but nothing else; in particular, you do not want to reveal which one is the red and which is the green ball.
Here is the proof system. You give the two balls to your friend and they put them behind their back. Next, they take one of the balls and bring it out from behind their back and display it. They then place it behind their back again and then choose to reveal just one of the two balls, picking one of the two at random with equal probability. They will ask you, "Did I switch the ball?" This whole procedure is then repeated as often as necessary.
By looking at their colors, you can, of course, say with certainty whether or not they switched them. On the other hand, if they were the same color and hence indistinguishable, there is no way you could guess correctly with probability higher than 50%. Since the probability that you would have randomly succeeded at identifying each switch/non-switch is 50%, the probability of having randomly succeeded at all switch/non-switches approaches zero ("soundness"). If you and your friend repeat this "proof" multiple times (e.g. 20 times), your friend should become convinced ("completeness") that the balls are indeed differently colored.
The above proof is zero-knowledge because your friend never learns which ball is green and which is red; indeed, they gain no knowledge about how to distinguish the balls.
Now that you have an understanding of ZK, let's look at how this affects blockchain and cryptocurrencies, Ethereum specifically:
Gas fees have been a huge problem for ETH. But there are a number of ways to improve performance . Rollups are by far the most popular scaling technology. So wait wait wait.... What Are Rollups or ZK-Rollups? Rollups are smart contracts that reduces computing and storage requirements for validating a transaction block. As noted previously, they do so by rolling up hundreds of transactions into a single one. Zero-knowledge proof is one of the methods to accomplish that.
When a network is overburdened with information, the fees increase. That’s because public, decentralized blockchains have limited block space to contain transactions. Accordingly, when the network traffic is higher, the demand for block space increases, leading to validators charging more for each transaction to be validated.
Rollups are divided into two types: Optimistic and Zero-Knowledge (ZK). Both types do one job — rollups reduce the Layer 1 network’s (Ethereum) workload by scooping up, or rolling, hundreds of incoming transactions as a single transaction. This bundled single transaction is then verified and added back to Ethereum, as another data block on its public ledger. Because of this continuous offloading of transactions from Ethereum, the Layer 1 network remains uncongested. And when Ethereum is not congested, it is much cheaper to use because its ETH gas fees fall down drastically. After all, every computer network requires some bandwidth/computational resources to be expended. In the case of decentralized blockchain networks, that cost falls onto users themselves. This is why Layer 2 networks are so important. Rollups, in particular, have a dual impact — granting fast and affordable user experience to the Ethereum ecosystem.
So now that you have a better understanding of Blockchain verification and gas fees, we can take it to SPACE ✨🚀
I live in a country where electricity blackouts (or loadshedding as they call it) is part of everyday life. We usually experience 3 sets of loadshedding a day, each ranging from 2 - 4 hours at a time. One of many disruptive results of this, is that the signal drops during loadsheding. This is because the signal towers have back up batteries for when the electricity cuts but - since there has been loadshedding for months, the batteries do not get to charge fully. You might be wondering why I'm telling you this (and I'll give you a clue, it's not for sympathy). One word - SIGNAL. You would be surprised to know how many things are affected by the ready availability of electricity, and signal. When the signal drops, it not only drops for your phone but also for transactions. Think card machines, financial services, banking etc.
Now again, Mr Elon Musk has been working on Starlink, something you may have heard of to address this issue. Starlink is a satellite internet constellation operated by SpaceX, providing satellite Internet access coverage to 45 countries. It aims for global mobile phone service after 2023. SpaceX started launching Starlink satellites in 2019. The purpose of using satellites for signal would basically make signal towers null and void, with a direct link form the satellite to the receiving point such as the phone and eventually card machine etc. This is where the exciting news now becomes relevant. ZK - tested on satellites.
Recently, in a collaboration between crypto-satellite developer Cryptosat and global hackathon organizer DoraHacks, the first successful experiment to launch a ZK (Zero-Knowledge) proof system in space recently occurred onboard the International Space Station (ISS). According to DoraHacks and Cryptosat, the experiment performed onboard the ISS showcased the capability of a satellite-based computation environment to successfully perform part of the trusted setup process required to use a ZK proof protocol. According to Cryptosat, which is attempting to launch a constellation of cubesats into orbit and build out its satellite fleet, the success of the ZK proof experiment is a crucial component in demonstrating the efficacy of space-bound computational environments. The procedure entailed sending pre-uploaded open source programs to the ISS through a secure link in order to generate a string file for the ZK proof-based voting program. Cryptosat has also already launched two mug-sized satellites, Crypto1 and Crypto2, the latter of which is currently being tested.
💭Final Thoughts...
We're not there yet. The two legs that go with connection is signal.. and device. The one without the other is useless. Many people around the globe still do not have access to devices and even if they did, what happens if you lose your device? Just how vulnerable would you be if your device is stolen? Those are questions for another day perhaps....
Thanks for reading this far ! Interested in a technical and chart analysis of Ethereum? Check out this idea :
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