Hermez Network announced the start of its zk-rollup mainnet version on Wednesday. This means that the network is now open to users who can benefit from the rollup’s much lower transaction costs than Ethereum.
Zk rollups do not use evidence of knowledge to verify the correctness of a large number of transactions. An external ecosystem executes these transactions and generates proofs for them, which are then published directly on the Ethereum blockchain. The result is a saving of more than 10 times the block space, with Hermez transactions in the main chain weighing only 10 bytes compared to more than 100 bytes for a standard Ether transfer.
Hermez supports several major tokens including Ether (ETH), Wrapped BTC (WBTC), Tether (USDT), Dai and HEZ, Hermez ‘tokens.
For the zk rollup, money must be paid into a smart contract and withdrawn for use in the Ethereum mainnet. However, unlike optimistic rollups, funds can be withdrawn from the second shift immediately. In Hermez’s case, there are still some precautions to be taken to ensure a smooth start. Pol Lanski, Head of Ecosystem Development at Hermez, told Cointelegraph:
“It is an automated volume limit for withdrawals that is implemented in the smart contracts as an additional control point to identify the anomalous behavior of the network. This restriction will only take effect automatically if a sudden high volume of withdrawals is detected. The goal is to give the development team time to review the system and see if the funds are being withdrawn. “
Hermez comes a few months after ZkSync, a similar solution from Matter Labs, launched. While it was rolled out on platforms like Gitcoin, a mixed crowdfunding and grants platform, few other integrations have existed.
Hermez starts in the mainnet with an integration with Bitfinex and Tether. Antoni Martin, co-founder of Hermez, told Cointelegraph:
“We have several exchanges dedicated to implementing Hermez, and many of them are in direct contact with us and play with the testnet.”
Still, it seems to be more difficult to encourage adoption of the second tier than initially thought. Payment-only systems can only be used to transfer funds between exchanges or to pay for products in centralized ecosystems that support the second tier. They cannot be used directly with DeFi as users have to withdraw and deposit funds each time, which partially defeats the purpose of the rollup. Since the Tether and USDC contracts are among the largest “Gaz Guzzlers” on the network, even a payment-only rollup can significantly reduce the pressure on Ethereum fees.
Comments are closed.