Developer specializing in zero-knowledge infrastructure and Ethereum scalability solutions, =nil; Foundation announced the release of its public product roadmap. The foundation plans to launch Devnet (V0) in July, followed by the ecosystem testnet V1 in November. Testnet versions V2 and V3 are slated for the second and third quarters of 2025, respectively, with the mainnet Alpha version set for release in the fourth quarter of 2025. Following this, =nil; Foundation aims to transition from the Alpha stage to full decentralization.
With the introduction of Devnet, users will have the option to deploy and engage with contracts, retrieve contract states, and demonstrate synchronous and asynchronous contract calls in various scenarios. Although it will primarily concentrate on the development of different decentralized exchange (DEX) architectures, developers are free to build any type of project. This stage will serve as the initial proof of concept for zkSharding and provide an opportunity for a group of selected builders to work with the core team on identifying and addressing bugs, developing support for various tools, and stress testing the system.
The V1 Ecosystem testnet will focus on elaborating hyper-scalable applications and testing updates following the Devnet phase. It will encompass a networking infrastructure layer, improvements and adjustments based on Devnet feedback, and extra builder tools and dependency support. This stage will feature real sharding and will be accessible to a broader user base.
Meanwhile, the subsequent V2 and V3 testnets will introduce the initial version of the zkEVM, work on enhancements to developer experience (DevEx) and user experience (UX), and provide support for major developer tools. The anticipated release of the mainnet will feature the zkEVM, upgrades to the Placeholder Proof System for improved performance, a canonical bridge, optimizations in proof generation speed and cost, comprehensive end-to-end system audits, and extensive developer documentation.
We’ve been working tirelessly to bring zkSharding to Ethereum.
Today we’re proud to share our public roadmap and announce that our first Devnet is launching in less than two weeks at EthCC.
Read the full announcement → https://t.co/nKCzBFpNIU pic.twitter.com/hENCwc0Wg0
— =nil; Foundation (@nil_foundation) June 25, 2024
What Is =nil;?
It is designed to transcend the usual monolithic versus modular debate by prioritizing horizontal scalability. It achieves this by using zkSharding, an innovative sharding architecture that allows the system to scale beyond the limitations of a single machine’s processing power.
In zkSharding, execution shards generate zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to verify intra-shard state transitions, while a designated consensus shard manages the overall state of the cluster. The consensus shard synchronizes the execution shards and produces a ‘master’ ZKP, which is then sent to Ethereum for global state verification.
This approach provides an effective strategy for scaling Ethereum, circumventing the common limitations of the modular approach, such as state and liquidity fragmentation.
In November of last year, =nil; Foundation unveiled a zero-knowledge rollup capable of scaling Ethereum to over 60,000 transactions per second (TPS) through zkSharding. This solution leverages the benefits of both modular and monolithic architectures, maintaining unified liquidity and state while ensuring full composability with Ethereum. By combining zero-knowledge rollup with sharding, zkSharding enables parallel transaction processing while preserving a shared state, thus effectively scaling the Ethereum network without the usual trade-offs associated with modularity.
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