ZKM CEO: How Can a General-Purpose zkVM Achieve Network Effects?
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ZKM CEO: How Can a General-Purpose zkVM Achieve Network Effects?
"Our ultimate goal is to unify fragmented liquidity across multiple ecosystems."
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Kevin Liu, Co-Founder & CEO of ZKM
Translation: Coolman, Foresight News
In his book "The Cold Start Problem," Andrew Chen (a16z) defines network effects as the phenomenon where a product's value increases with the number of users. As a founder building infrastructure projects, we are working to create a universal zkVM that connects liquidity across blockchains, and I have been continuously reflecting on how to achieve network effects for foundational infrastructure.
B2B or B2C?
Many investors have asked me the same question—how does zkVM capture value? Given that there are many different types of zkVMs in the market and all code will eventually be open-sourced, exploring this question is entirely reasonable for an infrastructure project.
Like our peers RISC Zero, SP1, and Jolt, ZKM has made significant progress over the past year, continually improving performance benchmarks. One key difference is that while RISC Zero and SP1 primarily target Rust, ZKM provides native support for Golang. For any project, especially an infrastructure one, choosing between Rust and Golang remains a persistent dilemma for developers. Many application-specific chains opt for Golang due to its developer-friendly nature and thriving ecosystem. For example, Optimism’s mini-geth and the Cosmos SDK are two of the most widely used toolkits written in Golang.
ZKM chose Golang as its first frontend language, allowing developers to compile their code into MIPS instructions using the standard Golang compiler, then ensure correct execution through ZKM’s proof network. Based on current CPU benchmarking, a single prover in this network can verify 5.4K instructions per second. With GPU acceleration, this speed can increase by 3–5 times.
Rust, known for its strict type system and memory-safe design, is increasingly adopted by infrastructure projects. However, Rust-generated MIPS instruction sets for equivalent logic are approximately 6–8 times larger than those from Golang. That said, supporting Rust is also on ZKM’s roadmap.
Due to reliance on robust technical stacks, many partners have already shown interest in collaborating with zkVMs. Yet to achieve network effects, a project needs more than just strong technology—it must actively engage potential partners in business development and encourage them to build on the tech stack. The success of our zkVM depends on its usage and adoption rate. In short, any project’s success hinges on the strength of its entire ecosystem.
Nevertheless, the key for infrastructure projects to realize network value lies in differentiation. If numerous players follow similar strategies, how can a project stand out and capture its own value?
Optimism offers a valuable precedent. Studying OP Stack’s path to success reveals it wasn’t flawless from day one—SuperChain adoption didn’t happen overnight. Rather, the success of the Optimism L2 drove OP Stack adoption, attracting numerous teams to build on SuperChain for future value capture. In Web3, you need to first establish a killer use case. This killer use case becomes not only a powerful demonstration of your technology but also a convergence of product-market fit, community engagement, marketing strategy, tokenomics, and more—factors that ultimately determine a project’s success or failure.
In this fiercely competitive market, I don’t believe there’s any way to completely prevent competitors from capturing market share. Instead, competition is always dynamic; the key to success lies in the flexibility and adaptability of the tech stack.
Therefore, ZKM始终坚持 placing “flexibility” and “adaptability” at the core, choosing to build unique use cases to drive tech stack adoption.
Where to Begin?
ZKM has released the Entangled Rollup LightPaper, which details ZKM’s interoperability mechanism for connecting fragmented blockchain liquidity. To date, the Entangled Rollup architecture has successfully enabled verification between Ethereum Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks. So what network should we connect next?
This network should offer substantial value and have a strong need to interconnect with other ecosystems. Bonus points if it’s already mature and highly influential.
Considering these criteria, the answer is obvious: Bitcoin.
Bitcoin indeed faces a major limitation—lack of smart contract support. But ZKM’s Entangled Rollup aims to roll up state onto the ZKM network and relay proofs to other ecosystems—we’ll apply the same approach to scale Bitcoin. From Bitcoin’s perspective, in this initial phase, the ZKM network functions similarly to a Bitcoin Layer 2.
How Is a zkVM-Powered BTC Layer 2 Different?
According to L2.watch, over 100 BTC L2s have launched or are about to launch. How will our solution stand out?
Since both the entire Entangled Rollup framework and the zkVM layer will support the BTC L2, we can offer native security and sustainable yield as key features of this network.
1. Native Security
When I speak with Bitcoin holders and miners, nearly everyone asks me the same question: How do I keep my assets safe?
BTC Layer 2 security can be determined by two factors. First, Layer 1 assets should be controlled by native Bitcoin multi-signature scripts, ensuring that as long as one honest party remains active, no malicious actor can unlock deposited or staked assets. Second, final transaction confirmation on Layer 2 must inherit Bitcoin’s security standards—requiring decentralized sequencers and enabling BTC scripts to validate L2 transaction execution.
ZKM introduces a mechanism called the Optimistic Challenge Process (OCP) to meet these security requirements. When user assets are deposited to L2, they are locked into a pre-signed n-of-n multi-sig script, where signers can be any authorized neutral third party or auditor. This script activates after the challenge period ends. The challenge phase is initiated when the signer sends assets to the target user ahead of time.
During the challenge phase, the signer must pre-sign a transaction containing both the challenge script and asset script. Then, challengers pay UTXOs to initiate challenges, requiring operators to provide computation traces to attempt commitment activation and trigger the asset script.
If the commitment fails to activate, verifiers receive all assets after the challenge period ends. Otherwise, the signer claims the assets.
Execution tracing is achieved via TapTree—each leaf node in the TapTree represents an intermediate value, each computed using a signature operation with the previous value as input. This allows Bitcoin scripts to directly perform signature computations and complete on-chain asset validation.
Thus, OCP provides native security for any off-chain computation—for instance, ensuring Layer 2 transactions remain within the sequencer network.
2. Sustainable Yield
Regarding yield, most Bitcoin holders prefer consistent, sustainable returns over short-term points or airdrop rewards. For ZKM’s BTC L2, introducing decentralized sequencers into the framework to batch process L2 transactions inherently provides native security. Therefore, these sequencer nodes (whitelisted for BTC) should be rewarded for their contributions.
ZKM reserves 40% of its token supply for mining pools, specifically allocated to sequencer node mining, liquidity staking mining, and proof network mining. This ensures sequencer nodes earn not only gas fees from transaction processing but also consistent, stable income from mining pools. Additionally, since sequencer nodes are the fastest entities processing L2 batch transactions, there are potential MEV opportunities. Thus, revenue and benefits from ZKM’s BTC L2 belong to all network participants—including node operators, stakers, and users. Furthermore, BTC L1 miners will also benefit from L2 transactions submitted to Layer 1.
Looking Ahead
Our ultimate goal is to unify fragmented liquidity across multiple ecosystems. First, we will establish a connection between Ethereum and Bitcoin networks. Our next targets will include other major ecosystems such as Cosmos and Ton.
I believe ZKM is exploring a fundamental mindset and operational model for foundational infrastructure projects. There may be some “growing pains” along the way, but we will learn from experience and provide the best guidance possible within our capabilities.
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