Storj is excited to announce its commitment to supporting zkSync Era on Ethereum – enabling storage node operators to receive payments with minimal gas fees, making decentralized cloud storage more economical and efficient.
zkSync is a trustless protocol for scalable, low-cost payments on Ethereum, powered by zkRollup technology. It uses zero-knowledge proofs and on-chain data availability to keep users' funds safe like they've never left the main net.
Background on zkSync and Zero Knowledge Rollups
The promise of a ZK Rollup capable of general computation has been predicted by many to be a key component in the endgame of blockchain scalability. The following core upgrade to Ethereum includes an update to the core transactional structure and is titled EIP 4844, the explicit goal of which is to enable a rollup-centric Ethereum.
This upgrade facilitates a new on-chain data type, called “blobs,” which are enclaved from the EVM execution environment and facilitate the native implementation of roll-up mechanisms (including both optimistic and zk) within the Ethereum network, enabling a massive increase in transactional throughput in a state-minimized manner.
With this upgrade, zero-knowledge rollups are facilitated at scale through a mechanism called protodanksharding.
This architecture upgrade to Ethereum can be considered an early realization of the Modular Blockchain Architecture – where key blockchain component functions like State, Execution, and Data Availability are separated at the client level – a core distributed systems concept that the Storj network has embraced since the beginning through its separation of peer classes into the uplink client, storage node, and satellite.
Storj – At The Cutting Edge of Web3 + Ethereum Scaling
Due to its emphasis on security through encryption – rather than by human operators – Storj has been a supporter of zkSync since early 2021 when we introduced the ability for storage node operators to opt-in zkSync payments, having successfully integrated the previous version of zkSync into our payments network with positive results before.
The next generation of zkSync improves on the original in many ways – with a better user experience through instant transaction confirmations, account abstraction, meta-transactions, and more. The latest release of zkSync is also compatible with the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) execution environment – making it even easier to seamlessly integrate a secure layer-2 system into the existing network architecture.
In the near future, Storage Node Operators will be able to opt-in to zkSync Era payments from the dashboard, using their existing Ethereum wallet address and key phrase.
Conclusion
To get started with Storj – we are offering 150 free GBs in Storj Credits to those developers looking to try decentralized cloud storage with zkSync https://storj.io/signup?partner=zksync
We’d love to hear your feedback about the decentralized architectures that can be enabled with zkSync! If you have any questions about Storj, check out our documentation. Please feel free to reach out on our forum.
