ZK Co-Processor: Further Opens up the Verifiable Computing Market

ZK Co-Processor opens up the verifiable computing market even more.

Article by Cabin VC, using Axiom as an example, exploring the new ideas and use cases that Ethereum’s ZK Coprocessors bring to the verifiable computing market, taking stock of other projects in this field, and speculating on the development of ZK technology and environment.

By using ZKPs, the ZK coprocessor on Ethereum can introduce historical data into smart contracts, which can bring new use cases. Observing the ZK coprocessor Axiom, its idea is to prove the validity of the computation in ZK, making the computation result usable on the chain. The structure of zkCoprocessor can perhaps be viewed as zkVM x Storage Proof.

Axiom runs through the following modules: 1) Read: trustlessly read the block header, state, transaction, and receipt of Ethereum historical blocks using ZK proofs; 2) Compute: applying verified computational primitives on the ingested data, including various operations in basic analysis (sum, count, max, min), cryptography (signature verification, key aggregation), and machine learning (decision tree, linear regression, neural network inference); 3) Verify: Axiom has a ZK validity proof for each query result, which can be verified on-chain in smart contracts, and the final result can be trustlessly used by any downstream smart contract.

• On-chain data analysis: Are we on the brink of the next NFT bull market?
• Amid the era of encrypted regulation, the United States is falling behind.
• Is the Bitcoin ecosystem a flash in the pan or brewing for a bigger explosion? BRC-20 has seen a roller coaster trend.

Other projects under this concept include: 1) Bonsai: a proof network based on StarkWare that brings verifiable computation to other chains through zkVM. It allows any chain, protocol, and application to use ZK proofs for scaling, privacy, etc., and aims to be a universal ZK computation accelerator; 2) RiscZero: a STARK-based ZKVM on the Bonsai network, aiming to become a universal ZK computation layer; 3) HyperOracle: a programmable ZK oracle and coprocessor that can run any ZK node network with execution trace proofs; 4) Herodotus: achieving cross-layer data access and synchronization between Ethereum and blockchains through storage proof technology; 5) Poseidon: proposing ZK-ZK Aggregator, which merges a batch of user-generated proofs into one proof through an aggregator, greatly reducing the cost of ZKP verification and bringing scalability to on-chain verification scenarios such as ZKML.

Reference: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/dRylg01EJRBQX5xBp3IOiw

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!