According to a quarterly report published by zkValidator, zero-knowledge (zk) technology has experienced significant adoption within the blockchain space in 2023. The report, titled 'The State of ZK', highlights that privacy and scaling are the major drivers of adoption, with 12.90% and 9.46% interest respectively. Identity solutions and new use cases for zk technology are also emerging as areas of interest within the blockchain ecosystem. Zero-knowledge machine learning (zkML) is identified as the most attractive new use case.
The report's insights are the result of zkValidator's collaboration with industry players like ZK Hack, zkSummit, and rhino.fi, Geometry, and UCL. The paper also features information from the two Ethereum scaling protocols and highlights the introduction of zkEVMs (Ethereum Virtual Machines) from Polygon and zkSync. zkSync Era, which launched over a month ago, has attracted more daily active users than Polygon's zkEVM, possibly due to rumors of a possible zkSync airdrop later in 2023.
The study also talks about the creation of brand-new goods, such as Geometry's Semacaulk, a zk set membership protocol that uses less gas than Merkle-tree constructions. The report also mentions the results of the $7 million ZPrize competition in 2022, which helped drive innovation in zk technology, including the development of multi-scalar multiplication (MSM) on Android mobile devices, improving proof generation time for mobile payments in zk.
Various other zk projects are identified in the fields of decentralized identity, interoperability, and payments within the Ethereum and Polkadot ecosystems in 2023. This includes Telepathy, a zkSNARK interoperability protocol for Ethereum, and Sismo Connect, a privacy-preserving single sign-on method for applications on both web2 and web3.
Investments in zk technology are also highlighted in the report, with The =nil; foundation raising $22 million, Proven raising $15.8 million, and Polyhedra Network raising $10 million for their respective zk-related projects.
Zero-knowledge-rollups, such as Polygon's zkEVM and zkSync, have gained attention in the first quarter of 2023, with adoption by Ethereum DeFi protocols since their alpha launches in March 2023.
Overall, the zkValidator report indicates that privacy, scaling, identity solutions, and new use cases are driving the adoption of zk technology in the blockchain space in 2023, with significant developments, investments, and projects in various areas of application.
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