10x Cheaper Rollups with Ethereum’s Proto-Danksharding & zkEVM Linea Head

Crypto and Blockchain Solutions for Ethereum

Zero-knowledge (ZK) proof solutions have been instrumental in scaling the Ethereum ecosystem, and now proto-danksharding is expected to drastically reduce the cost of rollups, according to Consensys’ zkEVM Linea head Nicolas Liochon.

In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph Magazine editor Andrew Fenton during Korea Blockchain Week, Liochon estimated that proto-danksharding could reduce rollup costs by up to 10 times.

EIP-4844, also known as proto-danksharding, is designed to reduce the cost of rollups, which bundle transactions and data off-chain and submit computational proof to the Ethereum blockchain.

The Ethereum Foundation has yet to confirm a launch date for proto-danksharding, but development and testing are still underway.

Rollups and Data Blocks

As Liochon explained, Linea delivers 15 times cheaper transactions compared to those made on Ethereum’s layer 1, but rollups are still limited by the fact that transactions are posted in call data in Ethereum blocks.

According to Ethereum’s documentation, rollups are still expensive in terms of their potential because call data is processed by all Ethereum nodes and the data is stored on-chain indefinitely despite the fact that the data only needs to be available for a short period of time.

EIP-4844 will introduce data blocks that can be sent and attached to crypto blocks. The data stored in blocks is not accessible to the Ethereum Virtual Machine and will be deleted after a certain time period, which is touted to drastically reduce transaction costs.

Liochon said that Linea’s prover, which essentially handles the off-chain computation that verifies, bundles, and then creates a cryptographic proof of the combined transactions, only represents a fifth of the cost.

ZK-Rollups and Optimistic Rollups

Crypto Cointelegraph reported that Linea, a general-purpose ZK-Rollup, was launched by Consensys in August 2023. This was accompanied by the onboarding of over 150 partners and the bridging of more than $26 million in Ether (ETH).

This highlights the major challenge of making ZK-Rollups the preferred scaling solution for the Ethereum ecosystem, as opposed to other solutions such as Optimistic Rollups.

Linea has plans to be used for a variety of decentralized applications and solutions in the Ethereum crypto down today space.