zkOmnichain: The Key Infrastructure of Web3 Networks

zkRollup and zkOmnichain belong to Layer 2 and Layer 0 tracks respectively, with different goals. The former addresses Ethereum congestion issues, while the latter aims to build the entire Web3 network. Although the influence of the Ethereum ecosystem is immense, the importance of zkOmnichain as a core technology for blockchain and Web3 cannot be overlooked.

Ethereum's market share is on a downward trend, decreasing from August 2020 to February 2023, with the latest data showing it has fallen to 59.24%. Although the Layer 1 infrastructure of Web3 may maintain a "one strong and many strong" pattern in the long term, with Layer 2 absorbing Layer 1 traffic, the strong growth of other public chains, and the rise of new public chains, it is expected that Ethereum's market share will remain below 50% in the long term after 2025.

After the rise of DeFi, most applications adopted a method of deploying separately on each chain to achieve multi-chain status. This approach not only increases the difficulty of development and operation but also leads to issues such as fragmented liquidity and cross-chain price differences.

There are three main implementation paths for full-chain coverage: the first is to achieve interoperability with different chains through intermediate consensus protocols, such as Cosmos and Polkadot; the second is to use Optimistic mechanisms to complete cross-chain interoperability, such as Synapse and LayerZero; the third is the full-chain interoperability protocol based on zero-knowledge proofs, zkOmnichain, such as Electron and Way Network.

In addition, there is another way to deploy applications on a new smart contract public chain and then interoperate with other chains, such as ZetaChain and Map Protocol. However, this method is relatively burdensome in terms of development and operation.

The first-generation intermediate chain model faces a trade-off between the number of validating nodes and security, making it difficult to bear the heavy responsibility of Web3 network infrastructure. Therefore, we need to focus on non-intermediate chain models, especially the second generation opOmnichain and the third generation zkOmnichain.

The Optimistic Oracle model in opOmnichain has issues with decentralization and shared security. Although the Optimistic Verification model is more rigorous, it still has latency problems.

zkOmnichain adopts Zero-Knowledge Verification, which has stronger robustness. It achieves completeness and fairness through rigorous mathematical and cryptographic verification, while also further compressing proof sizes using techniques such as Groth16.

The emergence of zkOmnichain makes it possible to achieve truly trustless and decentralized infrastructure. It eliminates the reliance on intermediary chains, intermediary tokens, and oracles, enabling full-chain communication through a peer-to-peer approach.

In the next three years, full-chain applications are expected to become the mainstream deployment model for Web3 applications, with zkOmnichain playing a key role in this process. We can expect to see the flourishing development of full-chain AMM, full-chain lending, full-chain SocialFi, and full-chain NFTs based on zkOmnichain.