Developers launch alpha version of zkSync Era on the Ethereum mainnet

The Matter Labs team has launched on the Ethereum mainnet the alpha version L2 solutions for scaling — zkSync Era.

gm zkEVM! ??

zkSync Era Mainnet Alpha is now open to all users.
Developers, projects, and users can now experience the power of zkEVM.

Read more: https://t.co/pL5PuZqanu

1/11 pic.twitter.com/oS6dwmXzeB

— zkSync ∎ (@zksync) March 24, 2023

The protocol is already open to all users; they can link their wallets and make transactions. According to the developers, this is the final stage before a full launch of zkSync Era.

In the near term, between 32 and 50 projects are expected to be integrated into the network. Among them are Balancer, Pyth Network, Mute, Redstone, Graph and Argent. Banxa, Yearn Finance, Celer, Chainlink, Aragon, Woo Network and Tracer DAO.

“This is definitely an alpha version. We do not claim that this is exactly the system we will see in a couple of years. There is still a lot of engineering work ahead. But this is the backbone of zkEVM,” said Anthony Rose, head of development at Matter Labs, in an interview with Decrypt.

To safeguard the protocol, the company spent $3.8 million on several smart-contract audits and bounties for white-hat hackers. For security during the initial testing phases, a withdrawal delay will be introduced on the network.

The developers noted that initially the protocol would not be fully decentralised, to allow the team time to fix security issues.  

“Scalability is good, infrastructure must be in place. But it must be accompanied by a user interface that can also be scaled,” added Rose.

Since its launch in November last year, as of February the testnet zkSync processed 8.8 million transactions across 497,000 active addresses. It also deployed 30,000 contracts. 

EVM— a compatible protocol built on zero-knowledge proofs and uses the technology ZK-Rollups. 

zkSync also provides account abstraction — meaning that every address on the network is represented by a separate smart contract. 

In April, Matter Labs will launch the public third-level testnet Pathfinder on top of Ethereum.