Zcash on Ethereum L2 w/ Starkware

[decentralistdan]

I would like to engage the Zcash community on a concept I’ve been mulling over, getting ZEC directly onto L2 Ethereum using a dapp built with Starkware.

As far as I understand it, there is currently only renZEC & wZEC which are wrapped ZEC on Ethereum’s L1. We know one of the pain points of these options are gas prices & getting ETH to use your wrappedZEC for txs. Another pain point is privacy once the ZEC is on Ethereum. I am under the impression that Starkware is leading the way for solving both the gas & improving privacy with their L2 solution.

From their website “ ZK-STARK proofs reveal no information regarding private inputs, and have no trusted setup. Combined with other cryptographic tools, ZK-STARK can be used to completely and provably protect user data.” Aligned ideals with Zcash community? I think so.

Now it’s worth noting that the ECC is an investor in Starkware, who’s cofounder & president is also a Zcash founding scientist. Can we call it a perfect fit for crosschain collaboration? maybe?

These tweets help explain where I’m going with this idea so I’ll drop those first…

Kent Barton

Kent Barton

Imagine an L2 native dapp on Ethereum purpose built with Starkware for getting ZEC on Ethereum where users can onboard directly onto the L2 where they can take advantage of cheap gas prices & the growing number of L2 dapps/dexs, etc…

Now I don’t know how to solve the problem of getting new wrappedZEC users the gas needed to instantly be able to use their L2 ZEC on Ethereum, but if fees are cheaper on L2 than I think that’s a good first step. Maybe there is a way where say 1.05 ZEC is deposited & the user gets 1 L2 ZEC + x amount of gwei for gas….

I know this idea is not fleshed out but I’m hoping the community can help me brainstorm on the viability of a concept like this.

Could the @ZcashGrants fund the Starkware team directly? Is there another team that is familiar with Starkware who could apply to work on this? Is a direct collaboration between ECC & Starkware the best option? Idk

https://starkware.co/ is the official website

[tokidoki]

The best way forward for Zcash is to have a common L2 with Ethereum. The best option for that today is zk-zk-rollup which Starkware seems to be at the forefront of. It’s even possible that the shared L2 will become the primary bridge for ZSA, as most major tokens are available on Ethereum.

It is an interesting idea on ZOMG funding a team on this for the long term. I doubt that there are competent teams who can tackle this soon though. So like most things in life, I guess we just have to wait. If you’re into ZEC however, just make sure other projects like MINA does not do this first.