Ethereum looking at zk-SNARKS to solve scaling issues

Scaling Ethereum is going to be essential. Especially if they are wanting to be the world’s supercomputer, as they suggest. dAPPS that have been built on Ethereum have already shown they can cause heavy congestion on the ETH blockchain.

Plasma is the ultimate goal to achieve this. Yet, like most scaling solutions (Lightning) progress does take time. Vitalik Buterin has suggested that incorporating zk-SNARKS into Ethereum could help solve some of these issues. In doing so, Buterin hopes that transactions per second (tps) would increase from 15 to 500.

There are already a few other cryptocurrencies that use such technology. ZCash, an anonymity-based coin, is perhaps the most well-known. Komodo is another that has used privacy enabling technology.

Whether Ethereum fans will be happy with the compromise is up for debate. Judging by the Reddit response on the Ethereum sub-reddit, they appear mixed. Some hope that such scaling implementations can be adopted as soon as possible to ease congestion on the network. Others though are still disappointed at the time it is taking for other solutions such as Plasma and Raiden to come to fruition.

With development on Plasma still looking like release is two years away then the adoption of zk-SNARKS could provide a stopgap to appease those invested in the network. The necessity of a scaling solution was highlighted in 2017. Crypto Kitties almost brought the network to a standstill when released. Such evidence will not have been lost on Vitalik. The need to scale has been highlighted. zk-SNARKS could be a viable option.

Is the adoption of zk-SNARKS an acceptable stop-gap? Let us know what you think in the comments. Don’t forget to follow us on @CoinRivet on Twitter and Coin Rivet on Facebook. These channels allow you to keep up to date with all the latest news and information regarding the world of Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and blockchain.