Original author: @KiwiCryptoBig
Original source: X
恭喜 ZKM
1) I flipped through the records, and I first talked about this project in March last year, during the deep bear market.
At that time, the team was still polishing the whole product, and the concept of zkmips seemed completely different from what it is now.
2) Technical difficulties: At that time, ZKM was using zkMIPS to build a general zkp system, which is a method that uses MIPS instruction set as a programming language for ZK rollup.
Developed by Stanford University more than 20 years ago, the MIPS architecture is a simple, optimized, and highly scalable RISC architecture. Features include a large number of registers, instruction counts, and characters, as well as visible pipe delay slots, which enable MIPS architectures to deliver the highest performance per square millimeter and the lowest power consumption in today's SoC designs.
These features are actually very suitable for writing ZK instructions, but the problem is that there are few development components and toolkits, and it is relatively difficult to build projects.
3) Therefore, at that time, my personal judgment was that it should take a long period to do such a low-level project, and it was a typical project with a medium win rate and excellent odds in a bear market.
The story about the ZKM now
1) Re-reading the white paper, the pattern of ZKM has opened up again:
ZKM's mission is to significantly enhance and integrate the decentralized internet by building a general-purpose zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) that allows state change communication between different blockchains (and even non-blockchain systems) without sacrificing security and decentralization, and ultimately enables the integration of blockchain and non-blockchain systems.
Link https://whitepaper.zkm.io/whitepaper1.2.pdf…
2) Technical details
zkMIPS provides an efficient and secure way to verify the correctness of calculations in a MIPS architecture in the form of zero-knowledge proofs.
- MIPS Architecture: zkMIPS is designed for MIPS processors, which are known for their clean instruction set and efficient performance, and are widely used in embedded systems and IoT devices. zkMIPS leverages the fixed instruction set of MIPS to make the generation and verification of zero-knowledge proofs more efficient.
- 零知识证明：zkMIPS 利用了 Algebraic Intermediate Representation (AIR) 和 Fast Reed-Solomon Interactive Oracle Proofs of Proximity (FRI) 等技术。 AIR 负责将 MIPS 计算转换为多项式，而 FRI 则是一种用于验证多项式近似低度的技术，这两者结合使得 zkMIPS 能够高效地生成和验证零知识证明。
- Software system architecture: Includes components such as ELF loader, MIPS virtual machine (VM), proof generator (Prover), and communication manager, which supports compiling programs into MIPS executables, executing MIPS instruction sequences, and generating ZKPs based on execution traces.
3) Application scenarios
zkMIPS has a wide range of application scenarios, covering multiple fields such as blockchain, Internet of Things, cloud computing, and machine learning, and has significant security and privacy advantages.
a. Layer 2 solution: In the blockchain, zkMIPS is combined with a layer 2 solution to enhance the privacy and scalability of transactions through ZKP. It can speed up transaction processing while keeping the data on the chain tamper-proof and transparent.
Internet of Things (IoT): zkMIPS can be used to improve the security and privacy of communications between IoT devices. When sending sensitive data between IoT devices, zkMIPS ensures the integrity and confidentiality of the data and prevents sensitive information from being leaked.
b. Decentralized cloud computing: In cloud computing scenarios, zkMIPS allows users to use cloud resources to perform computing tasks while ensuring the correctness and credibility of computing results without trusting cloud service providers.
c. Zero-knowledge machine learning (zkML): zkMIPS can be applied to machine learning models, allowing model consumers to verify the correctness of the model's output without exposing private data or model details for computation. This is especially important for scenarios where sensitive data is handled, such as medical information, personal privacy data.
落地场景: Entangled Rollups
Entangled Rollups enable efficient cross-chain communication between different rollups by sharing data and state between them.
It is also very good at catering to the market and seizing the wave of Bitcoin craze, Entangled Rollups can be used as a secure cross-chain bridge for Bitcoin.
1) Cross-chain liquidity unification: Through the Entangled Rollups architecture, the seamless connection between various blockchains can be realized, allowing assets and information to flow freely between different blockchain networks (such as Ethereum, Cosmos, Ton, etc.), which solves the problem of highly fragmented liquidity in the current blockchain ecosystem.
2) Secure cross-chain bridging: The existing cross-chain bridging methods have security risks, and Entangled Rollups synchronize the state of different blockchains through recursive zero-knowledge proofs, bypassing the traditional bridging mechanism and providing a more secure user experience.
3) Bitcoin Layer 2 Solution: Entangled Rollups provides a Layer 2 solution for the Bitcoin network, not only providing BTC holders and miners with a new way to earn transaction fee income and ZKM mining rewards by participating in decentralized sequencer nodes, but also enabling Bitcoin's sustainable income and network security through the proof-of-stake decentralized sequencer architecture.
4) Native Security and Sustainable Earnings: Entangled Rollups provides native security for the BTC Layer 2 network and a sustainable yield channel for node operators, stakers, and users through its unique Optimistic Challenge Process mechanism and decentralized sequencer.
At last
It's also been more than a year since I was emotional.
For a researcher, observing an item that made a judgment a year ago is a good feedback and cognitive closed loop.
I went back and looked at the most original research report at that time, and found that the team really completed it little by little this year.
Best wishes.