What are ZK rollups? Just another path for scaling Ethereum?

The cost of using the Ethereum network is increasing day by day and this is arousing the demand for Ethereum scaling solutions. Zk Rollups or Zero-knowledge proof rollups is another solution that promises lower gas fees without compromising security and decentralization.

Understanding the Ethereum scalability problem.

The biggest problem with the Ethereum network currently is the high gas fee users need to pay in order to go through a transaction. Ethereum price has increased almost 500% in the last year which means there has been a 500% increase in the fee which users are paying. Other than that due to the high demand of the Ethereum network for NFT’s, Defi, and other apps, network congestion has been another big problem.
Developers have been looking forward to other blockchains like Solana, avalanche, Binance smart chain to stay away from the high gas fee issue. This creates a huge opportunity for solutions that can help ETH in scaling. Zk Rollups is another promising technology that is looking forward to getting a good chunk of the pie.

Rollups have two main models Optimistic and Zero-knowledge. Optimistic rollups believe the transactions which are returned to the chain are legitimate, unless someone proves the transaction is fraud it is not declined. It takes innocent unless proven guilty methodology.

Zk rollups on the other hand work on zero-knowledge proofs which means in order for a transaction to be validated a proof is required. Zero-knowledge proofs are cryptographic evidence that proves that a transaction was legitimate. This way the whole chain of transactions need not be proved in order to validate a transaction zero-knowledge evidence is enough for the validation.