Editor | Wu Talks about Blockchain

Colin Wu, founder of WuSay, discussed Zircuit's project background, technical architecture and development plan with Martin Derka and Angel Xu, co-founders of Zircuit. Zircuit has gained support from well-known investment institutions such as Binance with its experience in smart contract auditing. Based on Ethereum's OP Stack and combined with zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology, it has built a "Sequencer-Level Security (SLS)" system to identify potential risks in advance. Zircuit promotes cross-chain cooperation with ecosystems such as Solana, and attracts developer participation through the "Build to Earn" program and staking incentives. Previously, Zircuit received investments from Binance Labs, Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital and Maelstrom.

Recently, Binance Web3 Wallet's Zircuit linkage event is also ongoing. At the same time, the Eigen Fairdrop event has officially started, and all eligible wallets will receive rewards.

Could you please introduce the background of the Zircuit team and its members?

Colin:

OK, welcome Martin and Angel. Could you please briefly introduce the members of the Zircuit team and your background?

Martin:

There are four co-founders in our team. My colleague Jan and I are the technical co-founders of Zircuit. We have very similar backgrounds. We both received our PhDs from the University of Waterloo in Canada, have been engaged in smart contract auditing for a long time, and have been responsible for smart contract security audits at a top company. With our academic background, we have also accumulated rich experience in research. In addition, we have 10 to 15 years of diverse software engineering work experience, covering different positions in large and small companies. At Zircuit, we focus on achieving platform stability, user accessibility, and security.

Angel:

Krishna and I are the co-founders responsible for the business. We have worked together for many years, and Krishna has been involved in the crypto industry since 2016. We have both invested in and served as advisors to multiple projects. I myself have previously founded a startup and led some investment projects. All members of our team know each other through work, and long-term cooperation has enabled us to establish a deep trust relationship.

Your project has received investments from Binance, Pantera and Dragonfly. How did you get their support?

Colin:

We have seen news reports that your project has received support from top crypto investment institutions such as Binance, Pantera, and Dragonfly. Can you share some of your experiences in attracting these investments? In particular, how to get top institutions like Binance interested in your project?

Angel:

In fact, most of Zircuit's R&D was self-funded, and we didn't start financing until we actually completed the product. We started seeking financing after launching the Rollup, because our Rollup has some unique advantages in security compared to other Rollups, especially the security features at the sequencer level. Therefore, it was easier to convince investors when we sought financing because they could see the actual operation of the product and clearly understand the value these features bring to users and projects. Many projects now start financing when they are only in the conceptual stage or the product has not yet taken shape, which often makes it difficult for investors to fully understand their vision and broader impact. Another big advantage for us is that our team members have rich experience in the industry, so many partnerships and friendships have been established. Many of our financing targets knew us before, so the whole process became smoother.

Did Zircuit receive early funding from the Ethereum Foundation? How did it help the project?

Colin:

Has Zircuit received funding from the Ethereum Foundation? What do you think of the foundation's support for you and other ecological projects?

Martin:

To be clear, Zircuit itself does not receive funding directly from the Ethereum Foundation, but some of our co-founders have received funding from the foundation to study specific research topics. For example, Jan received a grant to study the security of Rollup and the security of existing Rollup chains. During this project, we developed a comprehensive security framework to evaluate the security of Rollup networks. This research has brought us a deep understanding in this field and allowed us to see more clearly the strengths and weaknesses of Rollup. This knowledge provides us with a comprehensive perspective on the current security status of Rollup, helping us to better improve Zircuit. Our goal is always to pursue the best solution, and it all starts with research.

We also received a grant to study Rollup data compression. Rollups naturally generate a lot of data because users send transactions to Rollups, and Rollups process them off-chain (outside of L1). The role of Rollup is to record these transactions to a data availability layer, preferably using L1 as this layer. We found that the compression algorithm used by Zircuit saves about 40% in costs. Although compression requires additional computational performance, this trade-off can result in huge benefits. Through this research, we were able to answer key questions, such as whether to publish raw data directly or compress it first, and then evaluate the cost-effectiveness of each method. These findings are not only helpful to Zircuit, but also to the entire Ethereum community as we share our research through these grants.

How does Zircuit view the competition between Ethereum and Solana?

Colin:

In the Asian community, especially when Ethereum's price performance is poor recently, people often compare Ethereum and Solana. Multicoin Capital and some other institutions also often compare them. I think your team is obviously more inclined to support Ethereum. How do you view the competition between Ethereum and Solana?

Angel:

For us, since we are a Rollup for Ethereum, we have been committed to building in the Ethereum ecosystem from the beginning. But we are also interested in building connections with other ecosystems, such as Solana. We have been in contact with some of Solana's staking partners and may integrate them into our staking plan in the future. I think there are many possibilities in the future, such as collaborating with projects in other ecosystems or connecting Ethereum and Solana through cross-chain bridges. We are open-minded and very happy to see the development of Solana.

Martin:

Let me add. We chose to join the Ethereum ecosystem and chose Ethereum as L1 because we are focused on helping it scale. Ethereum's developer ecosystem is very strong, and the chain we provide adopts the same tools, environment, and execution model, allowing developers to join us directly without a steep learning curve. At the same time, since the founding of Zircuit, we have also worked with ecosystems other than Ethereum. For example, we integrated Bitcoin's restaking platform into our staking program to provide rewards to users. While we are firmly rooted in Ethereum and believe in its future, we also recognize that we are in a world where multiple chains coexist, including not only Ethereum's L2 and possible L3 in the future, but also other chains such as Bitcoin and Solana. As Angel said, we are excited about cross-chain and creating opportunities for users to use capital in different ecosystems.

Can you briefly introduce Zircuit’s hybrid architecture and how it differs from OP Rollup and ZK Rollup?

Colin:

Could you briefly introduce the hybrid architecture currently adopted by Zircuit, and explain its differences and advantages over OP Rollup (Optimistic Rollup) and ZK Rollup (Zero-Knowledge Rollup)?

Martin:

Of course. We have two main types of Rollups: optimistic and zero-knowledge. Optimistic Rollup aggregates the state and allows users to question the correctness of the state for a period of time. OP Stack is a very powerful optimistic Rollup framework. Building a Rollup is not just about building a Rollup mechanism, but also requires a sequencer, data publishing components, smart contracts, cross-chain bridges, execution layers and other components. OP Stack provides templates for most components, giving developers a good starting point.

However, because we wanted to build a zero-knowledge Rollup instead of an optimistic Rollup, the original configuration of OP Stack was not completely suitable for us. Therefore, we removed all components related to the optimistic model and replaced them with services and equipment required for zero-knowledge functions. From this, we built a hybrid architecture. From the user's perspective, it runs like a complete zero-knowledge Rollup, but the underlying design is a hybrid architecture.

The benefit of this for us and the community is that we can leverage the framework and foundation of the OP Stack. If we build everything from scratch, the cost and time are huge; by using the OP Stack, we take advantage of the stability and reliability of other chains that have been tested for many years. In software engineering, having a rigorously tested and trusted foundation is priceless. As a result, we can benefit from the OP Stack's developer community, who are constantly finding and fixing bugs, and we can merge them directly into our code base.

As Ethereum itself continues to upgrade (such as the "Petrus" upgrade expected in early 2025), our alignment with the OP Stack allows us to obtain these improvements in a timely manner. Because we are built on the same foundation, we can easily adapt to Ethereum's updates and ensure that our Rollup remains compatible. When necessary, we will modify the OP Stack to meet our needs, so we have a true hybrid architecture.

SLS is the core of your project. Can you describe how it works and explain how it addresses transaction censorship issues?

Colin:

SLS (Sequencer-Level Security) is a key feature of your project and is related to AI, a hot topic in the crypto industry. But some people are concerned that SLS may block certain transactions. Can you explain how this feature works and respond to these concerns?

Martin:

Sure. Let me explain what SLS is before I get into specific concerns. In Zircuit, when a transaction arrives, we don’t simply put it into a block and add it to the chain. Instead, we proactively analyze whether the transaction could pose a threat to the chain or trigger an attack. Each transaction is first evaluated by an AI module in the SLS system to see if it is malicious. This AI system is quite advanced, in part because we are part of the Ethereum ecosystem. Zircuit’s mainnet was only launched this summer, and as a relatively young chain, you might be curious about how we train our AI model to identify malicious transactions. This is where Ethereum’s rich ecosystem helps us a lot, as we are able to analyze data from other EVM-compatible chains to distinguish between normal and malicious transactions, effectively training our AI model.

If the AI flags a transaction as malicious, we quarantine it. This quarantine mechanism allows us to check if there are protocol vulnerabilities on Zircuit, giving us or the community time to suspend or fix the protocol, or at least alert users to the issue.

A significant advantage here is that we can precisely study the marked transactions and gain in-depth insights into the details of attacks or vulnerabilities, which is more efficient than traditional smart contract audits. The quality of traditional audits relies on the professionalism and imagination of auditors, while our model allows for proactive security protection, aiming to prevent attacks from happening, because once an attack on the blockchain occurs, it is often irreversible.

Concerns about transaction censorship mainly depend on the false positive rate of the AI model. If the model mistakenly marks normal transactions as malicious, it will bring a poor user experience. However, our mainnet has been running for about 3-4 months and the testnet has been running for nearly a year, processing millions of transactions. There have been no false positives so far. Normal transactions are usually very simple and can be easily distinguished from offensive transactions. Based on our tests, the accuracy of the model is over 99.5%, which means that normal transactions are almost never mislabeled.

If a legitimate transaction is mislabeled, we have a mechanism to allow it to be released. Transactions in quarantine are manually reviewed, and users can choose to cancel the transaction or try again later. In addition, everything related to SLS is transparent and open on the chain, and users can monitor it at any time. If users feel that SLS is unfairly censoring transactions, they are free to exit and trade elsewhere.

So far, our community has been very supportive of the security benefits of SLS, especially as it is an effective safeguard when users need protection against potential vulnerabilities.

When will the mainnet be fully launched? Are there any token or airdrop plans? What incentives will there be in the future?

Colin:

The next question is, when will the Zircuit mainnet be fully launched? Is there a token or airdrop plan? We know that Zircuit currently has a Build to Earn program, and many people in the Asian community are participating. Can you introduce possible airdrop activities in the future?

Martin:

Yes, the question about the mainnet is easy to answer - our mainnet is already live. We launched the private mode in early July for partners to test the network and deploy their systems. In early August, we opened the network to the public. Information on how to connect, how the cross-chain bridge works, etc. can be found at docs.zircuit.com. So the mainnet is completely open and accessible.

In the early days of Zircuit, we launched two major programs. One was the restaking program for liquid staking tokens, and the other was the Build to Earn program you mentioned. The Build to Earn program is still running and is designed to attract developers. We provide a stable and secure platform for developers to deploy and build exciting projects on Zircuit. Developers who participate in the program can earn points, which will be rewarded based on the project's contribution to the ecosystem. Developers can submit applications through build.zircuit.com, and our ecosystem team will contact them to evaluate how to support their work and possibly reward them with points.

We also launched a staking program. In order to cultivate an active DeFi ecosystem, we need liquidity, so in March we launched a staking program on L1, where users can deposit liquid staking assets - ETH, BTC, and other assets may be added in the future. These assets will gradually migrate to L2 and converge in our central liquidity center to provide liquidity for DeFi projects launched on Zircuit. So far, the Build to Earn program has received more than 1,600 project submissions, of which about 80 projects are actively built on Zircuit. For example, Ocelex, a decentralized exchange, and Elara, a native lending platform.

Regarding token incentives, Zircuit does have governance tokens, which have been released on the Ethereum mainnet. Users can obtain tokens by participating in staking, building, or other incentive activities, but these tokens are currently locked and cannot be transferred. They will be unlocked in the future. We will continue to launch more incentive activities, and the latest information will be released on our Twitter, Discord, and official website. You can follow us and the airdrop opportunities of partner projects built on Zircuit. So, please follow Zircuit L2 on Twitter or X and keep an eye out for our announcements.