zkTube: A best Layer2 environment for payment network

4 min readJul 4, 2021

Introduce

Ethereum is a global, decentralized open-source blockchain with smart contract functions. With Ethereum, one can write code that controls digital value, runs exactly as programmed and is globally accessible. Since launching the public mainnet in July 2015, Ethereum has undergone four major upgrades. Homestead was introduced in March 2016, Metropolis Byzantium in October 2017, Metropolis Constantinople in February 2019 and Istanbul in December 2019.

Since the release of Ethereum, the development of new technologies in the form of decentralized applications (Dapps) and other blockchains has expanded greatly. More importantly, many of these technologies have been built on top of the Ethereum network. However, scalability issues started to emerge. As the number of transactions increases on the Ethereum network, the cost of performing these transactions (paid in Gas ) also increases.

Problem

As we all know, Ethereum 1.0 mainnet attracted numerous applications to be built on it by virtue of its strong consensus and security. However, as the continuous development of the whole ecology, high delays and high GAS fees become the biggest impediments to its growth in turn. When the deployment of Eth2.0 still needs several years for completion, and its improvement to the underlying scalability of Ethereum are yet to be tested, the Layer2 capacity expansion scheme has been proposed at the right moment. By transferring some workload on chain to the off chain, there will have opportunities to quickly realize people’s expectations for Ethereum’s low fees, high throughput, and a good user experience.

The Layer 2 protocol of zkTube was just put forward in this background.

What is zkTube?

ZkTube is a Layer 2 protocol based on K Rollup (Layer 2 capacity expansion scheme with the zero-knowledge proof). In terms of token trading under the ERC20/ERC721 protocol, it can greatly reduce the transaction cost, and achieve the throughput 200 times than that of Layer1, with the TPS of up to 3000+. ZkTube will become a satisfactory solution for application scenarios with higher requirements on the transaction delivery, timeliness, and high-throughput Dapp.

Our advantages

Low Gas fee and high throughput

ZKTube protocol will set a block size as 12M, a theoretical throughput of 3,000 +TPS, and the cost of single transaction less than 2% of that for the corresponding operation on L1.

Safety guarantee at the level of Ethereum mainnet

On the zkTube network, the massive calculation and data storage operations will be processed on L2. And then, a large number of transactions will be summarized and packed into a single block and the zero-knowledge proof is generated, then all of them will be sent to L1 for verification, which not only improves the transaction processing speed of the whole network, but also ensures security.

Quick Transaction Verification

On the zkTube network, when the block with SNARK proof is sent to L1 for smart contracting and passes the verification, all transactions in this block will be confirmed, which only takes about 10min from submission to the completion of verification. And this time will be increased to seconds as ZKTube network throughput increases in the future.

Transfer payment received in a real time

On the zkTube network, it takes about 10min for the transaction to become the final confirmation state, but this doesn’t affect the normal use of L2. Users only need to adjust the balance contained in the Token leaf node in their account trees when conducting the transfer operation, so the transfer payment between L2 can be received in a real time.

Ecological planning of zkTube

An open source payment network

PayTube Wallet is an open source payment wallet developed based on the zkTube protocol for all users. We can provide an easy-to-use and low-cost Layer2 payment environment for users by virtue of our cross-platform mobile wallet, PayTube Wallet.

N+Dapp Solution

It is a Web 3.0 Dapp — PayTube Wallet based on the zkTube protocol, and realizes the interaction with DeFi, NFT and other fields. PayTube Wallet will become an “entrance” of zkTube access to various Dapp applications.

Conclude

zkTube is an Ethereum Layer2 protocol extension. It’s a zero-knowledge certificate-based base tier to build for applications using high-throughput, low-cost, unattended AMM and application billing on Ethereum.