Solana Introduces “ZK Compression” Aiming to Reduce On-Chain Storage Costs by 99%

Blockchain network Solana has rolled out a new feature called ZK Compression, developed through a collaboration between Light Protocol and Helius Labs.

Launched on June 21, the solution aims to reduce on-chain storage costs by 99%.

Uses of ZK Compression zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) to compress data on-chain, meaning developers can now, in theory, store crucial data on Solana’s more cost-effective ledger space without compromising security or performance.

Using sparse state trees, an off-chain hash of data is stored on-chain for verification, ensuring data integrity and significantly reducing storage costs.

According to Light Protocol, ZK Compression can reduce the cost of storing 100 compressed token accounts to approximately 0.0004 SOL, compared to the usual 0.2 SOL, a reduction of 5,000 times.

For large-scale operations, such as airdrops for a million users, costs could drop from $260,000 to just $50.

Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz highlighted the huge cost reduction and scalability gains brought by ZK compression.

“[In summary,] We compress state on-chain to achieve 10,000x scale improvements and move closer to building the financial computer – a global, unstoppable atomic state machine synchronizing at the speed of light,” he said. he declared.

Likewise, Austin Federa, head of strategy at Solana, highlighted that the innovation addresses the high costs of storing accounts on-chain.

He explained that ZK Compression provides similar economic benefits for tokens and accounts as cNFTs did for NFTs, enabling the development of products that attract more users to the blockchain.

Several members of the Ethereum community have expressed criticism of the new primitive. Alex Gluchowski, founder of ZKsync commented on X:

“Solana’s entire monolithic thesis disappeared in one fell swoop. Impressive. Meanwhile, ZKsync has been quietly building an asynchronously composable ZK future for Ethereum. Big reveal this week.

Ethereum investor Ryan Berckmans criticized the announcement for failing to qualify the new approach as Layer 2 networking, calling it “unethical BS” in an X. job.

“Their new product is actually an L2. The L2s are a winning model,” said Berckmans.

Similarly, others in the crypto community, such as Adam Cochran, have claimed that the Solana compression tool is essentially an L2, but its developers present it differently.

Cochran remarked, “One day the Solana folks will realize that what they’ve built is a good stack based on L2 functionality/validity and not a monolithic chain.

In response, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko defended ZK Compression, acknowledging its L2-like characteristics but emphasizing its unique aspects.

Contrary to traditional L2 networksZK Compression does not require security advice multisig, chain ID change, governance token, or external sequencer.

“Solana validators still receive all transaction fees. It’s like an L2 without everything people complain about about L2s”, Anatoly REMARK.

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