Blockchains provide verifiable execution by utilizing decentralized consensus mechanisms, and this consensus is what makes blockchains excellent distributed ledgers. A necessary part of current blockchain design is re-execution. Each node carries out the same computation per block to validate the correctness of the next state transition. For blockchain developers, the frustrating consequence of this is that performing relatively standard computations becomes unfeasible within the execution limits of a blockchain.
Layer 2 rollups have introduced the idea of verifiable offchain execution, taking execution away from the base layer to a new layer. To increase execution capability, all nodes are centralized to one big node: the sequencer, whose main task is to sequence transactions and calculate the state transition for each rollup block as quickly as possible.
Where do we stand? Blockchains offer reliable decentralized (albeit expensive) state storage. The increase in execution that layer 2 rollups provide is still not enough for many use cases in web3. Without verifiability, you have to re-execute all transactions to verify them. This is why blockchain execution is limited. ZK technology has extreme potential for helping blockchains scale execution, but until now, blockchain-specific ZK developer tooling has remained nascent and time-consuming, often requiring time-consuming bespoke solutions.
That changes today, as RISC Zero introduces
Steel 1.0, a production-ready EVM smart contract execution prover designed to bring boundless runtime to all EVM apps. Using execution proofs, Steel enables EVM apps to run completely offchain, while preserving onchain security. With Steel, you can prove correct smart contract execution without re-execution, allowing blockchain developers unbounded computation over onchain data.
Our partners are already developing game-changing applications with Steel. One application has shown gas savings of 1.2 billion gas for a contract call using around 400,000 SLOADs. 1.2 billion gas is around 30 blocks worth of execution and this can be verified onchain in one proof, that costs under $10 to generate, and less than 300k gas to verify. Steel unlocks boundless application runtime, without rollups, without centralization, without re-writing your smart contracts, and without writing ZK circuits. The brakes are off.
Start building with the
Steel documentation.
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