Summary
In Q1 2025, Matter Labs delivered critical infrastructure, protocol, and ecosystem contributions to advance ZKsync’s Elastic Network vision. Major performance improvements were achieved for Boojum 1.0, the current production proof system, while Boojum 2.0 (in development) reached a key milestone with benchmark results showing 10x improvements over existing alternatives. Matter Labs also prepared ZK Gateway and launched Bridgehub to enable native interoperability, reduced execution delay from 21 hours to 3 hours, and completed the audit and mainnet readiness of Smart Sign-On (SSO). Initial steps toward sequencer decentralization began with the rollout of the ChonkyBFT consensus protocol—now running with multiple validators on the Era mainnet. In parallel, Matter Labs supported the onboarding and launch of several partner ZK Chains—expanding the Elastic Network and demonstrating the viability of an interoperable rollup ecosystem. Through deep technical execution and close collaboration with partners, Matter Labs continues to serve as the core execution engine behind ZKsync’s scalability, security, and usability.
1. Performance & Cost Efficiency
Matter Labs made major progress in reducing transaction costs and improving infrastructure performance across the Elastic Network.
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ZK Gateway (Mainnet): Aggregates proofs from multiple ZK Chains into a single batch, reducing L1 settlement costs and enabling fast, low-cost interoperability. Migration is in progress; full adoption targeted for Q3 2025.
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EVM Precompile Support (in partnership with Distributed Labs – audit complete, slated for mainnet in v28): This upgrade adds native support for ECAdd, ECMul, ECPairing, and ModExp precompiles within ZK circuits, enabling much more efficient execution of cryptographic operations. Benchmarking in the staging environment with large proofs showed verification gas dropping from 6.8 M to 0.37 M—an ≈18× (94%) reduction compared to the current verifier. These improvements are expected to substantially lower gas costs for DeFi and privacy-preserving contracts that depend on these operations once the upgrade is live on mainnet. Final gas figures will be published following the v28 deployment.
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FFLONK Proof Verification (v27): Implemented a pairing-based verifier that cuts on-chain verification costs by up to 30%, making it more practical to run proof-heavy applications on ZKsync.
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Boojum 1.0 (production): Introduced significant optimization to the existing proving system, reducing prover startup costs by 40% and improving overall efficiency for operators running ZK Chains.
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Boojum 2.0 (in development): Made significant progress on a next-generation RISC-V-based proving system designed to bring major cost and performance improvements to the ZK Stack. Benchmark results show up to 10x cheaper transaction costs (targeting $0.0001) and 10x faster proving performance compared to competitor systems. Early tests also show 4x speedups on commodity hardware, with further gains expected in Q4 2025.
2. Decentralization & Security: Trustless Infrastructure at Scale
Key infrastructure upgrades enhanced trustlessness and resilience across sequencing, proving, and privileged operations.
- TEE-Backed 2FA & History Proving: Introduced SGX/TDX-secured two-factor authentication for privileged operations, backed by on-chain attestations to verify hardware integrity. SGX-based history proving enables full-state auditability without trusting a single operator.
- ChonkyBFT (Validator Consensus): Deployed a new consensus algorithm to mainnet for validator-based block production, moving ZKsync Era closer to full sequencer decentralization in line with Ethereum’s long-term goals.
- Decentralized Prover Networks: Announced and started integrations with Fermah and Lagrange, enabling ZK Chains to offload proving to independent networks. This will eliminate single-operator dependency, increase scalability, and enhance censorship resistance.
3. Privacy: Enterprise-Grade Confidentiality for ZK Chains
ZKsync advanced privacy infrastructure to meet the needs of institutions and enterprise use cases.
- Private Validium Chains: (in partnership with Moonsong Labs) Delivered a successful proof of concept for escrow-based token swaps on private chains, where transactions are only visible to participants and the network operator. This configuration offers institutional-grade privacy while maintaining compliance and auditability. These chains can interoperate with the broader Elastic Network via the ZK Gateway.
4. Developer & User Experience
ZKsync streamlined developer tooling and introduced intuitive user-facing features that mirror Web2 experiences.
- EVM Interpreter (v27): Achieved full EVM bytecode compatibility with Ethereum, allowing developers to deploy unmodified smart contracts using existing tools such as Foundry, Hardhat, and Remix.
- Execution Delay: Reduced the execution delay on ZKsync Era and ZK Chains from 21 hours to 3 hours, significantly improving both user experience and operational efficiency across the network.
- Foundry‑zksync 0.0.14 (in partnership with Moonsong Labs): Released an early Foundry fork tailored for ZKsync, adding zkEVM‑specific workflows and testing utilities. Although it has not yet reached full feature parity with upstream Foundry, it already provides a familiar development experience and enables true L2‑native development on ZKsync.
- Block Explorer Enhancements (in partnership with txFusion): Rolled out key updates to improve contract visibility and developer experience:
- Etherscan Cross-Verification: Verifying a contract on ZKsync’s explorer now triggers verification on Etherscan for supported chains.
- Auto & Partial Verification: Contracts with previously verified bytecode or minor metadata differences (e.g. comments or file paths) are now auto-verified.
- Token Directory: Launched a new page listing all tokens with basic metadata and real-time prices (where data is available) to support easier discovery.
- Smart Sign-On (SSO): SSO passed its external audit and is now mainnet-ready. The SDK enables users to authenticate with passkeys, biometrics, or WebAuthn, eliminating seed phrases and supporting session-based access for a seamless, Web2-like user experience.
- React Native SDK: Offers an integrated toolkit for bringing SSO, session keys, and granular permissions into native mobile apps with minimal friction.
5. Interoperability & Elastic Network
ZKsync continued to deliver on its Elastic Network vision—an ecosystem of interconnected, purpose-specific ZK Chains.
- Flexible Data Availability: Integrated with Celestia, Avail, and EigenDA to give chains a choice between Ethereum-based or off-chain data availability. This flexibility supports a wide range of use cases from high-security finance to cost-sensitive gaming or enterprise systems.
- Bridgehub: Launched as a unified token bridge, Bridgehub enables shared liquidity across ZK Chains. Assets bridged from Ethereum become natively accessible across the Elastic Network, improving composability and capital efficiency.
- ZK Chain Launches: Matter Labs supported the successful onboarding of several new chains onto the Elastic Network, providing business development, partner engineering, marketing, and technical guidance. Recent launches include:
- Live on Mainnet:
- Deployed to Testnet:
- Genlayer – hosted by Caldera (Launched March 11, 2025)
- Space & Time – hosted by Caldera (Launched January 28, 2025)
- ZaynZK – hosted by Caldera (Launched January 28, 2025)
- Interop Proof of Concept (ETHDenver 2025): Successfully demonstrated native, bridge-free messaging between two ZK Chains—validating the feasibility of protocol-level interoperability within the Elastic Network. The demo video walks through the interaction, while the accompanying open-source PoC code illustrates relatively small set of changes required to enable cross-chain calls today.