Sovereign: Provides a development toolkit for Rollups, drops the usage threshold of zk-SNARKs technology.

A certain crypto project has completed a $7.4 million seed round of financing, achieving a "eight-digit" valuation. The project is building a software development kit aimed at helping developers create secure and interoperable zk-SNARKs rollups. Below is an introduction to the project.

Sovereign is an open and interconnected rollup ecosystem dedicated to enabling all developers to deploy rollups that can seamlessly interoperate and scale, and operate on all blockchains. The goal of the Sovereign SDK is to be the simplest framework for creating secure and interoperable sovereign zk-rollups.

The Dilemma of Scaling Blockchain Applications

L1 public chain scalability is limited

Currently, there are three main ways to scale blockchain applications: application-specific L1 public chains, optimistic rollups, and zk-rollups. Application-specific L1 public chains are the easiest to design and deploy, but they have significant drawbacks. Each L1 must recruit its own validators and persuade them to stake enough funds to secure the blockchain. Due to the high cost of funds, this approach is only suitable for a few well-funded applications.

Limitations of Optimistic Rollups

Rollups allow developers to extend existing blockchains using new logic, rather than launching a new blockchain. This greatly drops the development threshold for application chains.

However, the current mainstream optimistic rollups also have issues. To reduce the burden on the shared validator set, optimistic rollups rely on fraud proofs to prevent misconduct. This results in a long "finality delay" for transactions, which can be rolled back due to the appearance of fraud proofs. Bridging to optimistic rollups thus becomes slow and costly.

Developers face a dilemma: should they build a purpose-specific rollup that allows users to frequently bridge between blockchains? Or should they create a general rollup to meet all user needs in one place? Neither option is ideal. The bridging speed between Optimistic chains is slow, the costs are high, and the risks are significant, making it unsuitable for everyday use. Meanwhile, general optimistic rollups face limitations similar to those of L1 public chains.

Advantages of zk-Rollups

For the above reasons, zk-rollups are considered the dominant scaling solution of the future. It has the advantages of optimistic rollups while avoiding long finality delays. Users do not need to wait for days to determine whether fraud proofs have occurred; as soon as validity proofs are generated (which may take only a few seconds), users can be confident that the transaction has been completed.

However, building zk-rollups is still a daunting task that requires highly specialized cryptographic engineers to invest for several years. This is exactly the problem that the Sovereign project aims to solve.

Features of Sovereign SDK

Sovereign SDK is dedicated to providing what Cosmos SDK does for L1 public chains for zk-rollups. It will offer various foundational components typically provided by blockchains, such as p2p networks, databases, and RPC nodes, allowing developers to focus on the business logic of their own blockchains. In addition, it will provide a set of default modules that run efficiently in a zero-knowledge environment: token deployment, verified data storage, and bridging modules.

The main features of the Sovereign SDK include:

1. Achieve seamless interoperability: Using a new bridging technology based on proof aggregation, it enables the back-and-forth bridging of Sovereign SDK rollups on shared L1 without the need for a trusted third party.

2. Secure and Scalable: By customizing each component for the use cases in zk-rollups, the Sovereign SDK will deliver outstanding performance by default.

3. Cross-chain compatibility: Sovereign SDK Rollups can run on any blockchain because they delegate the responsibility of checking proofs to the end users, rather than the underlying L1 public chain.

project development roadmap

The development roadmap of the Sovereign SDK is divided into three phases:

1. Research Phase (In Progress): Design the default storage module, cryptoeconomic model, and core API, and develop a research prototype. Expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2023.

2. Initial Deployment Phase: Deploy p2p network, RPC nodes, core APIs, and default storage and sorting modules.

3. Hardening Phase: Conduct code cleanup, testing, fuzz testing, and auditing, while developing the first use case of the SDK. Expected to last about six months, after which the SDK will go live on the mainnet.

Conclusion

Sovereign Labs' vision is to enable blockchain to support billions of users. To achieve this goal, the threshold for using zk-SNARKs must be dropped so that ordinary developers can also build Rollups. At the same time, the project team emphasizes that scalability will not be pursued at the expense of the verifiability of end users. The Sovereign SDK will remain completely free and open-source, committed to building each technical component to the highest standards.