TL;DR
The main function provided by OP Succinct is to integrate ZKP into the modular architecture of OP Stack to complete the conversion of OP Stack Rollup into a fully verified ZK Rollup;
If the endgame of Ethereum’s future expansion is to convert every Rollup into a ZK Rollup, the purpose of OP Succinct is to combine Rust and SP1 to implement the deployment of OP Stack’s Type-1 zkEVM (full Ethereum equivalent);
OP Succinct Proposer mainly completes parallel generation of proofs and proof aggregation and verification;
OP Stack's existing system relies on the "7-day anti-fraud window". If a dispute occurs, transaction verification will be postponed for a week. OP Succinct uses ZK proof to shorten the time required for transaction completion and eliminates the need for expanded anti-fraud windows. need;
OP Succinct can significantly reduce transaction costs.
1. Recent review: Current status of OP Mainnet and OP Stack and OP Labs
1.1 OP Mainnet recent development highlights
According to news on March 30, 2024, OP Labs released a "fault proof" on the OP Sepoila test network, and officially released a fault proof on the OP Mainnet on June 11, 2024, thereby advancing decentralization to the first stage. , which allows the withdrawal of Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens from OP Mainnet, and users can challenge and delete invalid withdrawals (including Base, Metal, Mode and Zora) without the need for a trusted third party.
To ensure the security and trust of user assets, Optimism uses failure proof to improve the accuracy and effectiveness of on-chain transactions and prevent evildoing. Its principles include:
Data availability: Failure proof first ensures that all data on Layer-2 is accessible and can be verified by Layer-1;
Challenge period: During a certain challenge period, anyone can dispute the data on Layer-2.
If someone finds that Layer-2 data is inconsistent with Layer-1 data, they can challenge it. Submission of proof: If there are objections, the Layer-2 operator needs to submit proof to refute these objections and prove the correctness of its data; Finality: If there are no valid objections during the challenge period, or the Layer-2 operator successfully rebuts it objection, the transaction will be finalized and considered valid.
1.2 The relationship and difference between OP Stack and OP Labs
OP Labs is a team or organization that develops Optimism solutions, and OP Stack is a technical architecture used to build and expand the functional Ethereum second-layer network. The relationship between OP Labs and OP Stack can be understood as the relationship between developers and their development tools.
OP Labs:
OP Labs is a core contributor to the Optimism project and is responsible for developing and maintaining Optimism second-tier solutions. It is a team or organization focused on building and improving technical tools related to Ethereum scaling capabilities, such as Optimistic Rollups. The main goal of OP Labs is to reduce the load on the Ethereum mainnet, reduce transaction costs and increase transaction speed through layer 2 scaling solutions. OP Labs is also collaborating with other projects, such as Succinct Labs, which focuses on the optimization of zero-knowledge proofs, to further advance Ethereum scaling technology.
OP Labs is the main team or organization that develops and maintains the Optimism Network. Their goal is to build an efficient solution that extends the functionality of Ethereum, focusing on reducing transaction fees and increasing transaction speed. Not only are they responsible for the development of Optimistic Rollups, they are also actively promoting new technologies related to zero-knowledge proofs, such as OP Succiinc in partnership with Succinct Labs.
OP Stack:
OP Stack is a modular architecture or technology stack used to build and expand the functional Ethereum second-layer network. It consists of multiple customizable components that allow developers to build their own Layer 2 Chain according to specific needs. It provides a standardized method that allows developers to quickly build a Layer 2 extended function network that meets specific conditions.
OP Stack is a modular architecture developed by OP Labs. This architecture provides the infrastructure for building a second-layer network. Developers can use OP Stack to quickly build different expanded function networks. Due to the modular design of OP Stack, it allows users to flexibly choose different verification mechanisms (such as Optimistic Rollups or ZK Rollups) to meet the needs of different projects.
OP Labs can be understood as the developers of OP Stack. OP Stack is a technical tool provided by OP Labs to help developers build and expand the second-layer network of Ethereum.
Before understanding OP Succinct, you need to additionally understand the four main components of each OP stack:
op-geth: Get transactions from users and use these transactions to generate blocks and execute blocks;
op-batcher: Batch the user's transactions and submit them to L1;
op-node: reads batch data from L1 and drives op-geth for state transitions in non-sequencer mode;
op-proposer: Publish output roots to L1 periodically to capture L2 state to facilitate processing of withdrawals.
2. Succinct Labs and OP Labs work together to inject ZK elements into OP Stack
2.1 OP Succinct architecture composition
Combined with the content at the end of Chapter 1.2 above "Four Main Components of OP Stack", OP Succinct is a lightweight upgrade of OP Stack, allowing the chain to only use ZK-verified blocks while keeping the other three components unchanged (op -geth, op-batcher and op-node), OP Succinct mainly consists of the following four:
Range Program: This is a program that executes batch blocks. This program is written in Rust and designed to be executed in zkVM;
Aggregation Program.: Proof of aggregation range program to reduce on-chain verification costs. This program is also written in Rust and is designed to be executed in zkVM;
OP Succinct L2 Output Oracle.: A Solidity smart contract containing an array of L2 state outputs, where each output is a commit to the L2 chain state. This contract already existed in Optimism’s original system, but was modified to use proof-of-verification as the authentication mechanism;
OP Succinct Proposer: Observe transaction batches published on L1 and control the proofs of range programs and aggregation programs.
2.2 What kind of Ethereum expansion narrative does OP Succinct tell?
zkEVM Rollup is very difficult to build due to the in-depth cryptographic expertise. When building the modular OP Stack, the OP Labs team has considered supporting the proof of various validity mechanisms, and developed Kona as an open source (see extended function link 1) to Use Rust to implement the state transition function STF (function logic of transaction state transition) under OP Stack Rollup, and finally use Kona and SP1 programs to generate OP Stack's zero-knowledge proof (ZKP), that is, theoretically all OP Stack's The chain is upgraded and ZKP can be used.
The goal of SP1 (Succinct Processor 1) is to enable any developer to seamlessly integrate Type-1 zkEVM rollup using standard Rust code, and seamlessly integrate any existing OP Stack chain in only 1 hour through OP Succinct Upgrade to Type-1 zkEVM rollup and provide the high performance required by the application. This provides the following advantages:
ZKP’s rapid confirmation: shorten the certification delay to tens of minutes to “replace” the 7-day fraud certification challenge period;
Reduce costs and increase efficiency: the average cost of each transaction is as low as a few cents;
Switch OP Stack to ZK: Just deploy a smart contract and start a lightweight OP Succinct proposal service (see below) to generate proofs via API calls (including batch processor/sequencer, op-node, indexer etc.);
Type-1 zkEVM: All tools and smart contracts compatible with OP Stack Rollup are suitable for OP Succinct Rollup;
Improved scalability functionality: Using customizable OP Succinct rollup, new precompilations can be added and rollup logic can be modified.
According to the official GitHub, the process only requires the installation of Rust, Foundry and Docker, and any existing OP Stack rollup can be upgraded to a Type-1 zkEVM rollup, and the process is simplified to only two steps:
Deploy the ZK L2OutputOracle.sol contract;
Start the OP Succinct proposal service (see GitHub extended function link 2 for the process).
2.3 Building Type-1 zkEVM using SP1 Reth
Succinct believes that the future of EVM Rollup will be a maintainable zkEVM written in Rust language. Currently, OP Rollup mainly faces three problems: too long 7-day fraud proof window, complex interoperability, and reliance on multiple groups in some cases. Data, not fraud-proof mechanisms. Additionally, creating zkEVM is a lengthy process, so SP1 was developed to address these issues.
SP1 is a high-performance 100% open source and completely open source customized zkVM that can verify the execution of any Rust (or LVM compiled language) program. According to public data, OP Succinct Stack has been successfully used on OP Mainnet, OP Sepolia and Base chains. Run, and achieved a proof cost of $0.01-0.02 in Ethereum transactions (see extended function link 3). It is hoped that in the future all blockchain infrastructure (including Rollup, cross-chainers, co-processors, etc.) will be written in Rust (or other LLVM compiled languages) and utilize ZKP.
According to a summary of the Succinct blog and open source GitHub content, the performance difference between SP1 and other zkVMs is mainly caused by several key factors:
Precompilation-centric architecture: SP1 supports a flexible precompilation system that can significantly accelerate a variety of operations (such as secp256k1 and ed25519 signature verification, sha256 and keccak256 hash functions), reducing RISC-V cycle times for many programs by 5- 10 times. Its design goal is to provide performance comparable to ZK circuits while maintaining the flexibility and good developer experience of zkVM;
Completely open source: SP1 is 100% open source, allowing teams like Argument and Scroll to implement custom precompilation, significantly reducing cycle counts and speeding up proof generation times;
Industry Standard: Since its introduction, the concept of precompilation within zkVM has become an industry standard, incorporated into projects such as RISC0, Valida, Nexus, and Jolt. SP1 is the only production-ready zkVM with extensive precompilation support for critical cryptographic operations;
Efficient memory reading and writing: SP1 adopts an innovative memory proof method, using a single challenge to achieve consistent memory for multiple proofs, avoiding the overhead caused by Merkleized memory;
Basic efficiency optimization: Improved utilization of tracking areas using lower blowup factors and new generation lookup parameters (such as LogUp based on logarithmic derivatives), as well as FRI variants in Plonky3.
3. Can OP Succinct be OP Stack’s trump card against ZK Stack?
If Ethereum’s expansion function plan looks at OP in the short term and ZK in the long term, assuming that OP Succinct can succeed, it will be regarded as an important milestone in the development path of Ethereum. OP Succinct provides an upgradeable path for Ethereum Rollups to convert from optimistic verification to zero-knowledge proof. This not only reduces transaction costs, but also increases transaction speed. It also retains the security and anonymity attributes of ZK Rollups, providing future application layers. The outbreak brings new possibilities.
Among the recognized four kings of Layer 2, OP Stack is slightly better than ZK Stack in terms of project ecological development at this stage. The Matthew Effect may further appear in the future. With the addition of OP Succinct, it has also absorbed ZK Stack to a certain extent. traffic and potential, if OP Succinct can be realized in the future, it may also have a certain impact on the traditional rollup of zkEVM.
However, according to what is publicly stated at this stage, it is not difficult to find from the operating logic of OP Succinct how to ensure that developers promptly discover the systemic risks caused by unknown vulnerabilities when modifying STF functions or adding new precompiled functions. This requires We keep a long-term focus.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reprinted with permission from: "Foresight News"
Original author: Ac-Core, YBB Capital Researcher
