New scaling solution will provide 10,000 times faster transactions to infinite scale on the ETH blockchain

• The zkSync scaling solution aims to bring unlimited scalability to Ethereum while offering greater flexibility to developers.
• zkSync Layer 3 is faster, cheaper and more usable and will improve performance by more than 100x.

New Ethereum scaling solutions continue to be in the works even after the recent transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain network. According to reports, a new Layer-3 prototype aimed at solving Ethereum’s scalability issues will be deployed for testing by Q1 2023.

On Monday, October 10, zero-knowledge blockchain solutions provider zkSync announced that it will deploy a new EVM-capable layer-3 prototype called “Pathfinder” on the testnet early next year.

With 18 days until zkSync 2.0 on the mainnet, we are excited to share another exciting milestone on the horizon: zkSync’s Layer 3 Pathfinder will be released to the public testnet in Q1 2023.

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— zkSync (@zksync) 10 October 2022

zkSync is a Layer-2 Ethereum scaling protocol that helps significantly reduce the cost of network usage. Two years ago in June 2020, zkSync launched its 1.0 version. Now it is preparing the launch of zkSync 2.0 later this month.

zkSync 2.0 will have five magic ingredients to support Ethereum scaling. This includes general ZK digest, EVM compatible, solvency support, open source and Ethereum Ethod compatible. This Layer 2 solution will provide the necessary solution that will help scale Ethereum without compromising its security and decentralization.

However, zkSync Layer 3 comes into play to achieve larger goals of unlimited scalability and mass adoption. Speaking about the development, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said:

I don’t think there is one vision for what Ethereum can do, I think there are many different visions. Once Ethereum manages to solve its scaling issues, it’s going to be in a much better place to be the underpinning that allows all of these visions to happen. In the medium to long term, ZK rollups will win out in all use cases.

zkSync Layer 3 will provide a 10x-100x performance increase

As said, zkSync Layer 3 aims to achieve unlimited scalability and thus increase network performance by 10X-100X. The team behind zkSync said they are trying to build an L3 “ecosystem of customizable and trustless linked blockchains powered by zkEVM that we refer to as ‘HyperChains’.”

The L3 prototype will provide several different opportunities to make improvements in different areas of blockchain performance, including customization, scaling and security. zkSync aims to address five main features while building Layer 3. These include security, performance, cost, ease of use, and composability.

With zkSync Layer 3 solution, developers will be able to choose 3 options for data availability. In addition, developers will also be able to customize their fractal HyperChain. Speaking about this, Steve Newcomb, Product Manager at Matter Labs – the engineering team behind zkSync, said:

[Our] The L2 solution is going to be 10x to 100x at max at L2, but it’s L3 where we have like a star cluster of 10x moments where we make it faster, cheaper and more usable. That’s where the game will be played [L3] and you know, the reason people should see us differently than Polygon is really about when they get around to getting that L2 solution, which has a lot less performance than us.