An Interview with ZKSwap’s Lead Dev Alex Lee

An Interview with ZKSwap’s Lead Dev Alex Lee

ZKSwap has recently announced a major development in the form of the V2 launch. As the noise around the platform’s latest move continues to increase, we decided to reach out to its lead developer and ask him a few questions about it.

NewsBTC (NB): Can you tell us more about the ZKSwap V2?

Alex Lee (AL): ZKSwap is one of the first few ZKrollup based layer2 DEXes using the AMM model. This layer2 DEX has the full functionality like Uniswap, only it happens on Layer2, which means zero gas fee for layer2 transactions and instantaneous confirmation.

ZKSwap has been live on Ethereum since Feb 2021 and will soon be implemented on the Binance Smart Chain, HECO, and OKEX Chain when V2 comes live by the end of June.

NB: How is it different from other L2 solutions and what does it mean to the ETH ecosystem?

AL: Among the layer2 solutions, the two major ones are ZK-Rollup and Optimistic Rollup.

We choose ZK-Rollup because it provides the same security as the underlying layer1, and it uses validity proof whereas optimistic rollup relies on fraud-proof. That’s why the withdrawal time for optimistic-based dex from layer2 to layer1 is as long as 7 days and ZKSwap only takes 40 mins.

The finality feature is very critical for dexes. That’s why even Vitalik mentioned in his “An Incomplete Guide to Rollups“ https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/01/05/rollup.html as follows:

“In general, my own view is that in the short term, optimistic rollups are likely to win out for general-purpose EVM computation and ZK rollups are likely to win out for simple payments, exchange, and other application-specific use cases, but in the medium, to long term ZK rollups will win out in all use cases as ZK-SNARK technology improves.”

NB: What are the improvements featured by V2 over its predecessor?

AL: ZKSwap V1 has supported full swapping, adding/removing liquidity, and transfer functionalities on layer 2. V2 has optimized the circuits to make transactions faster and at even less cost. Another major update is that V2 will enable unlimited token listing.

NB: What are the fees associated with listing and trading the tokens on Zkswap V2?

AL: We charge no fees for the Unlimited Token Listing service, allowing users to list any ERC-20 tokens or token pairs on ZKSwap for free. In the future, we will also make this service open to all types of tokens besides the ERC-20 ones.

On ZKSwap, the first 50 transactions on layer2, eg swapping, transferring, adding/removing liquidity, are free, but we do charge a 0.3% transaction fee after the first 50 transactions.

NB: Can you tell us more about the adoption rate of Zkswap among the crypto community?

AL: I think we’ve got pretty good results so far. It has been four months after the ZKSwap mainnet launch. Our peak TVL reached over $ 1 billion, around 70% of the total TVL on Layer 2, and the average TVL is around $200 m this week.

Besides, our total trading volume on layer 2 has exceeded $11.5 billion, and the total swap volume more than $2.2 billion. More than 3,000 visitors in the past 7 days were active on our mobile APP.

At present, we have around 87k users and more than 42k community members across various media platforms all over the world. The figure is still growing fast, and the community has indeed contributed a lot to what ZKSwap is today. Many users joined our Product Test Program, giving valuable suggestions and feedback on the product experience. The same program with even bigger rewards comes along with the V2 launch, and we expect more participants this time.

NB: What kind of impact do you expect ZkSwap V2 to have on the current DeFi ecosystem?

AL: Gas fees and network congestion are two main problems hindering DeFi adoption and development, which is especially true with Ethereum. As we are deploying V2 across Ethereum, BSC, HECO, and OKChain, we’re creating a more expansive DeFi ecosystem that allows users to list and swap thousands of new tokens with ease and at a low cost. With ZKSwap V2, we aim to make the current DeFi ecosystem more accessible with improved scalability and usability.

NB: What are the future plans for ZkSwap?

AL: We have a very exciting roadmap lined up. Shortly after our V2 launch will be the “layer2 for all”, aka implementing ZKSwap on BSC, HECO, and OKEX Chain, and probably around the same time we will enable layer2 NFT swapping on ZKSwap, which means zero gas fee for NFT transaction and transfer.

Also, our 1998 NFT art on BSC is in production and will be introduced to the community soon. We will also be working on bridging layer2 and centralized exchanges. Another major milestone will be to enable the general-purpose EVM on ZKSwap by Q4 2021.

In general, our goal is to build a layer2 infrastructure with a robust ecosystem.

 Learn more about ZKSwap at – https://zks.org/