Loom Network Update Q4 2023

It’s been a busy year here at Loom Network! Our CryptoZombies coding school got a new look, was awarded a grant by the Optimism foundation as part of a retroactive public goods funding experiment, and launched a new course in collaboration with the NEO Blockchain. But enough about CryptoZombies, in this update we’re going to focus on the development progress of our core product — the zkLoom protocol.

First zkLoom Testnet Launch

On June 21st, 2023 we launched our first zkLoom testnet, powered by the new zkLoom protocol that utilizes a zkRollup architecture. This was a significant milestone for the team — the culmination of three years of research and development!

Broadly speaking there are two kinds of rollups, zero-knowledge rollups and optimistic rollups, each with their own security and usability tradeoffs. Much has been written about rollups already, so we’re not going to go into the nitty gritty details, but in general a rollup works as follows:

1. User signs a transaction and submits it to an operator on L2.
2. An operator on L2 rolls up multiple transactions into a batch and submits a hash of the new state to an overseer smart contract on L1 along with a cryptographic proof that this new state is the result of the application of a batch of valid transactions to the old state.
3. The operator on L2 also publishes a state delta to L1, usually as calldata (or a blob post EIP-4844). This is done so anyone can reconstruct the state at any time.
4. The proof and the state delta are verified by the overseer smart contract on L1.

Essentially a rollup helps to scale Ethereum by offloading work from L1 to L2. Instead of verifying each transaction individually on L1, transactions are rolled up into a batch on L2, and then the whole batch is approved on L1 in one go.

The zkRollup architecture that’s utilized by the zkLoom protocol has a number of important properties:

• Operators can’t corrupt the state or steal funds.
• Users can recover funds from the rollup even if operators stop doing their job.
• No one has to continuously monitor the rollup to prevent fraud (in contrast to Optimistic rollups).

Our zkLoom testnet is now open for on-boarding of third-party developers. If you’d like to play around with the new testnet yourself you can find out how to access it in this tutorial, then continue on to the quick start to find out how to create, deploy, and interact with smart contracts.

zkLoom Sepolia Testnet Launch

The zkLoom testnet that we launched in June is paired to our own internal Ethereum testnet. By the end of January next year, we intend to launch our second zkLoom testnet, this new testnet will be paired to Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet, and will replace the current zkLoom testnet.

The new and improved zkLoom Sepolia testnet will bring a number of advantages to third-party developers:

• Better out-of-the-box development experience — Sepolia is now the recommended Ethereum testnet for developers, so a lot of Ethereum tooling and wallets should already be pre-configured to work with it.
• Ease of access — There are many faucets available for developers to obtain ETH for the Sepolia testnet, which means you’ll no longer have to wait for us to issue you a bit of ETH for our Ethereum testnet.
• Multi-protocol integration — Other L2s like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync Era have already deployed testnets that are paired to Sepolia, so you can start building dapps that operate across multiple protocols, and integrate support for the zkLoom protocol with minimal fuss.

Post-launch we plan to deploy a token bridge and a few demo dapps onto the zkLoom Sepolia testnet, to be used as a reference for developers, and to showcase network performance. We intend to keep this testnet operational for an extended period, rolling out protocol upgrades without resetting the on-chain state whenever possible.

The zkLoom protocol has a highly configurable transaction fee system that allows users to pay for transactions using either ETH or LOOM, or to delegate transaction fee payment to another party entirely. This feature provides an opportunity for developers to streamline the on-boarding of end-users in their dapps, and on the zkLoom Sepolia testnet developers will be able to experiment with various transaction fee payment strategies to find the optimal approach for their dapps.

Upcoming zkLoom Protocol Upgrades

There are a couple of major protocol upgrades on the horizon that we’re currently working on, expected to go live in Q1/Q2 2024.

Boojum Proof Generator

The most compute intensive step of a zkRollup protocol is the proof generation. Currently the proof generation system in the zkLoom protocol requires a cluster of A100 GPUs (with 80 GB of RAM each), this is quite powerful, but also quite expensive hardware!

Fortunately the zkSync developers at Matter Labs have made a lot of progress in this regard in recent months, they’ve implemented a new proof generation system named Boojum that is significantly more performant. Boojum can run on GPUs with 16 GB of RAM! Preliminary testing of the new system is now underway on the zkSync Era mainnet. There are further audits and security reviews the system has to go through before it can replace the current one. So, while it’s not quite ready for prime-time yet, we’ll be rolling out Boojum on the zkLoom Sepolia testnet soon, and running our own tests.

A reduction in the operational costs of the zkLoom protocol will be beneficial for our bottom line, but it’s also a big step on the path towards full decentralization of the protocol itself. With the reduced hardware requirements of the new proof generation system many more entities and even individuals could afford to participate in the operation of the network.

Proto-Danksharding (EIP-4844)

Originally the Ethereum developers planned to scale Ethereum by sharding, however this proved to be rather complex to implement, and the focus has now shifted towards rollup based scaling solutions. Which is how EIP-4844, otherwise known as Proto-Danksharding came about.

Rollups are in the short and medium term, and possibly in the long term, the only trustless scaling solution for Ethereum. Transaction fees on L1 have been very high for months and there is greater urgency in doing anything required to help facilitate an ecosystem-wide move to rollups. Rollups are significantly reducing fees for many Ethereum users: Optimism and Arbitrum frequently provide fees that are ~3–8x lower than the Ethereum base layer itself, and ZK rollups, which have better data compression and can avoid including signatures, have fees ~40–100x lower than the base layer.

All existing rollups have to store some kind of data on Ethereum, and this comes at a cost, which fluctuates along with the gas price on Ethereum. EIP-4844 introduces a new “blob” transaction type to Ethereum, these transactions can be utilized by rollups to store data on Ethereum at a lower cost than currently possible. While we won’t have concrete numbers until this feature is live on Ethereum, some predict an order of magnitude reduction in the storage costs. Most of these cost savings will likely be passed on to end-users, who will benefit from reduced transaction fees.

We’re looking at making the necessary changes to the zkLoom protocol to utilize blob transactions, though this particular feature is not as yet available on the Sepolia testnet, nor the Ethereum mainnet. EIP-4844 will be rolled out on Ethereum as part of the Cancun-Deneb hard fork, which is currently expected to occur in Q1 2024.

Basechain Migration to zkLoom Protocol

The Basechain mainnet is a globally distributed Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) network, powered by the Loom protocol, and secured by third-party validators.

The key features of the Loom protocol are:

• Fast transaction confirmation times at low cost.
• EVM-compatible, supports deployment of Solidity smart contracts using standard Ethereum tooling and libraries.
• High-performance core powered by native smart contracts, upgradable by consensus.
• Built-in transfer gateways that bridge tokens between Ethereum and other networks.

All of these features are now also available in the new zkLoom protocol.

However, the proof generation system and the sequencer (responsible for batching transactions) in the current zkRollup architecture cannot as yet operate in a decentralized manner. The aforementioned Boojum proof generation system moves us a bit closer to that goal by lowering the barrier to entry for other parties to participate in securing the network. But much remains to be done to fully decentralize these systems, which is a prerequisite for the successful migration of the Basechain mainnet and its validators to the new zkLoom protocol.

Wrapping Up

TLDR; Coming up in 2024…

• The zkLoom Sepolia testnet is slated for launch by the end of January — streamlining the on-boarding of third-party developers.
• A protocol upgrade to the Boojum proof generation system is expected in Q1 — reducing operational costs, and taking us a step closer to decentralization.
• Another protocol upgrade after Ethereum’s Cancun-Deneb hard fork — utilizing cheaper on-chain storage via blob transactions introduced in EIP-4844.
• An updated roadmap, shortly after the new year!

The team is winding down for the next couple of weeks to get some much needed rest over the Xmas holidays, but everyone will be back at it again in 2024.

Happy New Year!

Loom Network is building a Metaverse platform backed by an ecosystem of public blockchains to allow developers to create unique Metaverse experiences with blockchain-backed digital assets, virtual items and NFT-based privilege systems. A key part of this platform is our Basechain network — already live in production, audited, and battle-tested.

New to Loom? Start here.

Want to stake your LOOM tokens so you can earn rewards while helping secure Basechain? Find out how. You can also save a bunch in transactions fees by staking LOOM from Binance Smart Chain, more on that here.

Got experience running Linux servers, and interested in running a Basechain validator node? Reach out to us in our Telegram channel and we’ll tell you all about the current requirements.

Would you like to join us in building the core infrastructure of the blockchain-powered Metaverse? We’re always on the lookout for good Rust, Golang, Solidity, and Javascript/Typescript developers, so please email us at hiring@loomx.io if you’re interested.