ZKSync Era emerged as the most successful zero-knowledge rollup project based on ETH deposits on bridges. StarkNet was the second contender. Polygon’s ZKEVM and Mantle still draw in a small fraction of deposits, but are prepared for growth.
The ZK rollup trend produced several high-profile projects in 2024. One reason was to abstract most activity away from the Ethereum main net. Another is the need for confidentiality, which allows validators to confirm a transaction’s authenticity without sharing more information.
Read: Comparing the Best ZK Rollups Projects on Ethereum
Based on the behavior of nearly 50% of total users, ZK Sync Era drew in more than 70% of ETH deposits. Bridged assets represent the wish to use the new, faster networks, leaving the main net Ethereum layer.
Source: Dune Analytics
The ZKSync bridge significantly influenced wETH and USDT, despite deposits and withdrawals being almost balanced in the past day. The bridge holds around $7.3M, with most assets turning over once in 24 hours. The ZKSync Era bridge also increased its volumes by 73% in the past 24 hours as of June 4.
One reason for ZKSync’s success is the presence of a wholly developed project layer with robust competition.
Most ZK rollup projects aim to attract developers and serve as a platform to carry value and real-world applications.
ZK Rollups Grew with Web3 Applications
ZK rollups became popular in the past few quarters when the technology was adapted to Web3 projects. The big breakthrough was the ability to perform off-chain computation with the speed of regular databases. Only the final state of those databases is secured on Ethereum in a way that does not reveal additional details.
Also read: Optimism Price Prediction 2024–2030: Will OP Token Gain Momentum?
ZK rollups are also not necessarily confidential. Each has its block explorer and can reveal sender and receiver addresses. However, ZK rollup projects can also hide user information for financial privacy or anonymous voting.
ZK rollups have been used for less than two years, with Polygon being one of the first adopters. The 2024 bull market accelerated some of the chains and led to more exposure, turning “ZK” itself into a brand. Matter Labs, the team behind ZK Sync Era, recently gave up on attempts to copyright the technology.
One risk of ZK rollup tokens is that not all projects would use the required complex mathematics. Skeptics saw ZK rollup projects as dubious, relying on transaction batching without the promised cryptographic proofs.
Skeptics have not stopped ZK rollup projects from growing their value and being used to launch apps. ZKSync Era continued to be adopted for some of the latest use cases. The network hosted DEX, liquidity protocols, ETH staking and Eigen Layer points.
Blast, Base Grow Influence Among Optimistic Rollup Projects
Some of the big L2 scaling solutions are also using Optimistic Rollup technology and are competing for attention in 2024. Optimistic rollups are still widely used due to their early adoption and depend on a waiting period before transaction finality.
In the past few months, Blast and Base blockchains started with almost no presence but grew to account for 40% of the roll-up market based on value locked.
Blast and Base networks are now competing with Arbitrum, which started as a leader because of early adoption.
The value locked in rollup projects is independent of the technology and depends on the most prevalent project type. Bigger networks draw in DeFi products, which can enjoy greater liquidity.
However, in the past few months, ZK rollups have become more significant competitors, with more promises of fast transactions and finality. A re-awakening of Web3, gaming, and DeFi will only help those scalable networks.
The current ZK rollup trend may face some volatility regarding market prices. Yet demand for fast transactions is still there, as projects aim to build apps without the delays inherent to older blockchains.
Cryptopolitan reporting by Hristina Vasileva