Ethereum ships around itself

Imagine a DeFi lending marketplace that lives on an Ethereum rollup but liquidates loans directly into mainnet liquidity.

Even better? Its markets could be inexpensive to launch and use, with collateral sent arriving almost immediately. Additionally, the rollup below could prove itself to Ethereum every 12 seconds, even on its worst day.

The hypothesis I outlined above is of course not possible today. However, such a system is much closer to reality than a month ago, and the elements that compose it are coming together. out of the Ethereum hard fork pipeline, that is, the slow and deliberate process that changes the fundamental rules of the chain.

In fact, the major pieces needed for this type of build all made progress this week. Consider:

• Solara new Solidity compiler from Paradigm

• Accumulationthe first network built on the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ)

• Quick confirmation rule (FCR), via a notable new beta

• evm.fastan open competition to prove Ethereum blocks

Let’s break down the basics of each of these legos and then put them together to give you a better idea of ​​what I’m talking about.

First of all, Solar is a new beast on the market. In short, it can make Ethereum contracts cheaper, and it arrived without EIP.

Indeed, on November 2, Paradigm delivered version 0.3 of Solar, its new Solidity compiler built in Rust (i.e. the translator that transforms Solidity into Ethereum bytecode). This is the first version that actually produces bytecode, and developers can try it in Foundry with forge build --use solar.

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By ParadigmContracts compiled for solar cost about 26% less to deploy and about 5% less to execute than those for Solc, the long-standing default.

These numbers are also verified in early DeFi tests. For example, in its OUSD repository, Origin reported 35% cheaper deployments and approximately 4% gas savings per call without any code changes. Not bad!

The problem at the moment is that Solar’s README said not to use it in production for now. The economies are also not uniform. When Ekubo moved in its solar development branch, 166 gas measurements decreased but 12 increased. Regardless, there is great potential here.

Second, there is Rollup X, which paves the way for a seamless Ethereum crosschain UX.

If you missed my explanation in March, the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ) is an effort led by Gnosis and ZisK, co-funded by the FE, to give Ethereum and rollups synchronous composability, that is, one chain’s contract calling that of another and using the response in the same transaction, with everything reversed if one element fails.

At Devcon this week, ZEE launched Rollup X, its first public testnet, with corresponding demos. In one, CoW Swap filled a signed transaction on Rollup X with mainnet liquidity, and the tokens landed on the rollup in the same transaction. In another, Rollup X verified a post-quantum signature so that a mainnet contract could act on it.

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The technology is still maturing here, of course. Real-time ZK proofs are expected “sometime in 2027,” and Gnosis says the network “is not yet expected to be of significant value.” Either way, Rollup X is a taste of what’s to come.

Then, the quick confirmation rule can facilitate deposits (and more) in seconds.

Today, most L2s and bridges wait for finality before crediting Ethereum deposits, which takes around 13 minutes. According to the Explanation of EFFCR instead counts validator attestations (i.e., their votes on blocks) and can treat a block as confirmed in about one slot, or about 13 seconds.

FCR is not brand new like Gnosis decks I used it for Ethereum origin transfers since October 8. What is new is easier access. On November 4, QuickNode put FCR into beta behind the safe block beacon apps that are already calling, which should make it much easier for other teams to follow. As Ethereum researcher Julian Ma explained put it on“FCR adoption is now unlocked.”

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The bottom line here is that FCR assumes that at least 75% of entries are honest and online and that certifications arrive on time. Otherwise, it comes down to finality and, in extreme cases, a quickly confirmed blockage. could be reorganized.

Finally, evm.fast tackles the worst case scenario.

The whole “prove it to Ethereum in real time” vision depends on the provers tracking each block. They mainly do: GnosisZisK now proves 99.9% of Ethereum blocks in less than 10 seconds. The problem is the long tail. No one can yet prove the maximum amount of work that a single block could require, so a bad enough block could, in theory, cause proof times to explode.

evm.fastwhich was uploaded on November 2 by EF, zkSecurity and Verity Labs to the Yukon Search Platform, turns this issue into a ranking. Participants compete to prove, in the Lean Theorem Prover, a hard upper bound on the number of RISC-V steps (i.e. basic machine instructions) required to validate any Ethereum block.

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The current record for this ranking is infinityso any proven finite number would take first place for the moment.

These pillars are all powerful on their own, but when you bring them together, you can unlock new types of on-chain applications. For example, let’s go back to this hypothetical idea of ​​the next generation lending market.

In this vision, the pieces I talked about could fit like this…

Solar to launch the markets. Many lending protocols roll out new contracts for each new market, so cheaper deployments would increase as the protocol grows. And because interest rate and liquidation calculations apply to every loan, repayment, and liquidation, even single-digit fulfillment savings add up for users.

EEZ for liquidations. Lending markets on newer chains are risky because there is often not enough local liquidity to sell seized collateral in the event of a crash. With EEZ, however, a liquidator could sell collateral into a deep mainnet pool and repay the debt in a single transaction rollup, all rolling back in the event of a leg failure. The rollup could then more securely list collateral whose real liquidity resides on the mainnet, and arbitrageurs could keep their prices at the same level without taking bridge risk.

FCR for incoming guarantees. Not all dollars will arrive via a synchronous call; a lot will come from exchanges and other channels. With FCR, the market could credit these deposits in about 13 seconds instead of about 13 minutes, so that capital remains less idle and liquidity can flow when rates rise. The native DeFi touch? Guarantees confirmed by FCR could count at a discount, or under a cap, until they are finalized, so a rare reorganization cannot leave the market holding bad debts.

evm.fast style limits for bad days. Liquidations are more important when markets are crashing, because that’s when blocks are fullest and an attacker has the most reason to create one that is slow to prove, blocking the rollup’s link to the mainnet just when liquidators need it. A proven worst case, like the one evm.fast seeks for Ethereum blocks, would allow the operator to purchase enough proof capacity to obtain a proof on every location regardless. “Usually quite fast” can become “provably always quite fast”.

For users, the result of this type of application would be simple: borrow against assets whose deep liquidity resides on mainnet, transfer collateral in seconds, get tighter pricing, and pay a little less in gas. And all this with no hard fork required!

This idea of ​​a credit market is only the first hypothesis that comes to mind. You could swap the loan market for something else, and the same pillars could be applied in the same way.

Take for example a post-quantum treasury application for DAOs.

Signers could approve payments with quantum-resistant Falcon keys, a rollup would handle the costly signature checks, and mainnet treasury would then act on the outcome in the same transaction, just like the Rollup X demo.

Additionally, the mainnet would only pay a share of the ~5.5 million gas that direct Falcon control would cost (around 495,000 in the demo, per Gnosis). Solar power could reduce verifier costs, FCR could speed up incoming contributions, and a proven proof cap would make it all run smoothly.

We can revamp exchanges, payment apps, on-chain gaming and much more with these new tools. My main point is that the menu of what is buildable on Ethereum has just expanded, and without a single protocol change.

It’s no secret that Ethereum’s hard fork pipeline is a bottleneck, and that’s okay. Making fundamental changes to the channel should be approached slowly and methodically!

Yet it is Also true that the Ethereum ecosystem can ship around this bottleneck to expand what’s possible, and this week showed us a bright glimpse of this DIY dynamic in action.

Nowhere will this trend matter more than quantumly. Ethereum researcher Justin Drake said the technology for a post-quantum Ethereum is this is no longer the main problem but rather the All Core Devs (ACD) process.

If every customer team made quantum the top priority, Drake suggested it could happen within months. Otherwise, think the end of 2028 as soon as possible in the current state of affairs. However, as Rollup X’s Falcon demo showed, we don’t need to wait for mainnet to start making a difference on the ground before then.

Of course, the Ethereum fork pipeline is unlikely to accelerate. The more pressing question is to what extent one can build around this in the meantime and whether accountability (e.g. via ETHBEAT) keeps up!