Imagine a world where Ethereum scalability is limitless, transaction speeds are lightning-fast, and user privacy is sacred and inviolable. This is not a distant dream but a rapidly approaching reality, thanks to Taiko.
As major investors, we are thrilled to support Taiko on their journey of revolutionary innovation in the Ethereum ecosystem, with their Type-1 ZK-VM technology leading the way. Today, as they launch their mainnet, we stand at the forefront of unprecedented leaps in technological innovation.
While integrating ZK with EVM poses challenges, Taiko’s Type-1 ZK-VM technology (introduced by CEO Daniel Wang in 2023) is a breakthrough. CTO Brecht Devos and CFO Terence Lam have also been involved, and the experienced team has successfully launched multiple public testnets within a year, showcasing impressive metrics.
The Taiko team brings rich experience from their Loopring background, one of the earliest ZK rollups. This foundation equips them with the knowledge and skills necessary to tackle the complex challenges of Ethereum scalability. The management team has been working together for over five years, a rarity in the field, further solidifying their cohesion and effective innovation approach.
Taiko’s goal is to increase Ethereum scalability by 1000 times, providing developers with a UI and experience consistent with EVM. This means that any L1 project compatible with EVM can seamlessly transition to L2 by simply copying and pasting their code into Taiko.
One unique aspect of Taiko’s approach is the decentralization of proposers and verifiers to prevent single points of failure. Taiko utilizes Based Rollup to achieve decentralized ordering within the protocol. In this setup, Ethereum validators handle the ordering as Based Rollup allows for ordering on the underlying L1 chain. Additionally, Taiko’s Based Contestable Rollup (BCR) allows application chains to adopt updated and more efficient validity proofs without changing Taiko’s core protocol. Combined with Multi-Proof, this reduces potential vulnerabilities and smart contract errors in the protocol, making Taiko the only L2 solution with this capability.
These features have attracted over 100 DApps to join Taiko’s testnet. Taiko has established partnerships with EtherScan, USDC, Pyth, multiple DeFi protocols, and bridges. With the announcement of Uniswap deploying Uniswap V3 on the Taiko mainnet, we expect other major protocols to make similar announcements once the mainnet goes live. It is worth noting that Taiko has the largest Discord community in the entire crypto space, highlighting strong community engagement and support.
Taiko also has an extensive technical roadmap that includes several promising technologies:
Based “Booster” Rollup (BBR): Booster Rollup enhances the basic Rollup by providing native Ethereum L1 DApp scalability. BBR achieves atomic cross-Rollup transactions while retaining the L1 ordering advantage. After the launch of BCR on the mainnet, Taiko plans to upgrade to BBR or introduce a separate BBR L2 as a significant milestone.
Inception Layers: This involves using Taiko as both L2 and L3 layers, enabling it to run multiple parallel L2 instances and deploy L3 on top. Leveraging Taiko’s equivalence with Ethereum, scalability limitations can be overcome, allowing multiple Rollups to coexist. Through Inception Layers, this approach ensures extensive scalability while maintaining interoperability between different layers, preventing fragmentation.
Taiko has garnered support from notable figures in the Ethereum community, including Vitalik Buterin and Justin Drake. This recognition highlights the credibility and potential of Taiko’s technology. With such a strong foundation and a clear vision, Taiko is poised to become a cornerstone of Ethereum’s scalability and innovation in the future. We are delighted to be part of this journey.