Project Background

RaaS Services

Rollups as a Service (RaaS) offers a series of building services for Rollup networks to developers, which can help them design or construct special-case Rollup networks based on their specific business requirements and enable quick deployment. Rollup is a leading scalability solution that improves execution efficiency, resulting in faster and cheaper transactions, with security derived from the underlying chain. Most mainstream Rollup projects are designed for ecosystem-oriented blockchain networks, including ZkSync, Arbitrum, Optimism, StarkNet, etc. As developers’ demands for special cases increase, they may desire greater autonomy over Rollups, or the construction of single-application-oriented Rollups, allowing Dapps to have greater scalability and diversified features.

From this have emerged RaaS service providers, focused on providing developers with customized Rollup network SDKs, assisting them in quickly deploying Rollup networks. This has changed the prior need to build a powerful development team to construct a blockchain network and also lowered the entry barrier for Web2 teams into the world of cryptocurrency. Moreover, based on the fact that most blockchain projects open-source their codes, RaaS service providers can design a variety of combined networks more quickly based on existing network development maturity, for use by enterprises or groups, to meet the demands of certain consumer groups.

Project Funding

On April 22, 2023, Opside completed a $4 million funding round, led by Web3.com Venture Capital, with the participation of other well-known investors in the crypto industry.

The list of official collaborators is as shown in the image:

Mechanism Principle

Opside, acting as a sidechain, is positioned between the Rollup layer and Layer 1. It integrates PoS (Proof of Stake) consensus and PoW (Proof of Work) consensus into its network structure, responsible for generating ZK proofs for the Rollup layer, and providing PoS proofs to Layer 1. See the following diagram:

Image source: https://mirror.xyz/opsidezk.eth/_97BctFdavprY6-gxuf7oqpcx_FUjxSfvOmeCzOyI-8

In terms of its own network, Opside is a PoS sidechain based on Ethereum. The PoS consensus of the network is run by Opside’s network of validators, where anyone can stake IDE (Opside’s native token) to become a validator and participate in the network consensus. Validators are required to submit PoS proofs to Layer 1 periodically.

Under PoS, Opside has a fixed block production rate, with time divided into slots (12 seconds) and epochs (32 slots). In each slot, a randomly selected validator acts as a block proposer, responsible for creating new blocks and sending them to other nodes on the network. Additionally, in each slot, a validator committee is randomly selected to use their votes to determine the validity of the proposed blocks.

Validators of Opside are not only responsible for generating blocks in the Opside network but also operate sorters for the Rollup network—packing transactions for the Rollup network, earning network gas fees and block rewards within Rollup. ZK proofs for the network are handled by dedicated provers, i.e., ZK mining. Any individual with sufficient computational power for ZKP calculation can become a prover for the Rollup network, generating ZK proofs for transaction data submitted by sorters based on PoW rules. The prover who first submits the ZK proof will receive the block rewards from Rollup.

A supplement to the basic settings of zk-Rollup: Generally, state changes of the Rollup network (such as user account data changes) are stored in a Merkle tree, and official nodes (sorters) pack network transactions. Sorters validate and confirm transactions submitted by users, then package them into blocks, generating a new Merkle root. Simultaneously, nodes must generate zk-SNARK proofs (a process requiring significant computational power) based on the newly generated block. This, along with the new Merkle root, is passed into Ethereum’s smart contract, which verifies the correctness of transactions in the Rollup network.

Therefore, there are two main roles in the zk-Rollup designed based on zero-knowledge proofs:

1) The network’s sorters, which in Opside are managed by the network of validators;

2) The generation of zk-SNARK proofs, which in Opside is open, allowing any user to stake IDE to become a prover, providing computational power services to the Rollup network.

To prevent malicious behavior from provers, they must register in the system contract and stake at least 100,000 IDE tokens. If the current staking amount is less than the threshold, the submission of hashes and ZKPs is not allowed. Rewards for submitted ZKP proofs will also be distributed according to the proportion of the staking amount.

On the other hand, Opside encourages miners to provide ZKP computational power through the ZK-PoW mechanism, thereby providing comprehensive hardware infrastructure for ZK-Rollup. To encourage multiple miners to participate in ZKP computation, i.e., PoW mining, Opside adopts a two-step submission ZKP verification mechanism. The shares of ZKP PoW rewards will be distributed to valid ZKP submitters—miners, based on certain rules.

Image source: https://mirror.xyz/opsidezk.eth/rgovFrpGSDH87Hqxkm3CrqHV_QSALiYRNPo_JPy5UZ0

1）Submitting a Proofhash: After calculating a Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) for a specific sequence, the prover first calculates the hash value of the proof/address and submits this hash value and address to the smart contract. The proof is a zero-knowledge proof for a specific sequence, and the address is the prover’s address.

Assuming the first prover submits the ZKP hash value at block T, it is accepted until block T+10 without any restrictions. From block T+11, new provers cannot submit hashes.

2）Submitting a ZKP: After block T+11, any prover can submit a ZKP. As long as a ZKP passes verification, it can be used to validate all submitted hash values. Verified provers receive a Proof-of-Work (PoW) reward based on the ratio of the miner’s pledged amount.

If no ZKP passes verification before block T+20, all provers who have submitted hashes will be reduced. The sequence then reopens, allowing new hash values to be submitted, returning to step 1.

The ZK-PoW mechanism is expected to be deployed on multiple chains. For each underlying chain, within a single block, each Rollup can only submit one sequence. Each sequence shares the current block’s PoW reward equally. This means that, for example, if a block on the underlying chain has four Rollups submitting sequences, the PoW reward is divided into four parts, with each sequence getting a quarter of the block’s PoW reward. In the future, workload estimation will be carried out for each sequence based on the corresponding ZK-Rollup type, the number of Rollup transactions, gas usage, etc., to price different sequences differently.

Overall, Opside unifies its own network and Rollup network validator sets by blending PoS and ZK-PoW mechanisms, enabling the IDE token pledge economy to provide security protection for the Opside and Rollup networks. The open design of zk proofs also allows a large amount of market computing power to participate in the Opside network, providing computing power protection for network security.

Token Model

The total amount of IDE tokens is 10 billion (not yet launched), of which:

• 10% are allocated to venture capitalists;
• 14% are allocated to the Opside team and contributors;
• 15% are allocated to the community, including early testers, ecosystem project developers, and potential future airdrops;
• 28% are allocated to the foundation for supporting ecosystem development, follow-up financing, etc.;
• the remaining 33% serve as rewards for validators and miners who provide data storage services, generate zero-knowledge proofs, maintain the blockchain, and execute contracts.

The token distribution diagram is as follows:

Image source: https://mirror.xyz/opsidezk.eth/jIHaoowya4XG50zYtqhJ_WS14dl8vYKYspknSTP3vgY

According to the mixed PoS and PoW consensus, block rewards are divided into two parts, distributed to validators and miners. During the Pre-Alpha test network phase, the temporary block reward ratio for PoS and PoW is fixed at 1:2, i.e., 11% of IDE is allocated to validators, and 22% is allocated to miners. In the future, this ratio will be dynamically adjusted according to the supply and demand of global ZKP computing power.

In addition to serving as network incentives, IDE will serve as governance tokens. After the launch of the Opside main network, IDE holders can collectively decide the network’s future through a reasonable process and mechanism. The Opside DAO will determine all updates to the parameters and mechanisms of the Opside main network.

Project Progress

On May 8, 2023, Opside initiated the first batch of developer experience eligibility applications, where developers were required to provide their own GitHub links and elaborate on their previous development experience.

Image source: https://mirror.xyz/opsidezk.eth/z2VIpXUzxVMr6kjPPds2CZ5FO6lsdTcF72rzOG08P8E

Simultaneously, Opside is expected to launch its pre-alpha testnet in the coming weeks. After the launch of the Opside Pre-alpha testnet, regular users can experience various functions such as cross-chain transactions, transfers, and Dapp interactions. Completion of specific tasks will also earn user loyalty points, which hold future value. After the launch of the Opside mainnet, these points will be eligible for conversion into mainnet tokens.

Users can also apply to participate as PoS and PoW validators, contributing to the security and stability of the Opside network. So far, Opside has received over 6,000 applications from users in more than 50 different countries.

Conclusion

RaaS service providers, by decoupling the execution, settlement, and data availability of Rollup networks, enable virtual machines beyond EVM, such as SVM and MoveVM, to be used as Rollups. This diversified combination provides infrastructure support for financial use cases and other applications.

Importantly, the application interaction issues faced by the current ecosystem-centric zkEVM chains may be optimized within RaaS services. This is because a single Rollup often operates as an App Chain (a chain that only executes a single application) and does not need to function as an ecosystem chain with extensive application and smart contract interactions.

Therefore, if the issues faced by zkEVM are not satisfactorily resolved in the medium to long term, more development teams may choose to use the RaaS architecture to build zk-Rollup-based App Chains with the maturation of RaaS service providers. This is because it offers faster settlement verification, a selection of multiple DA layers (networks providing data availability, such as Ethereum and Celestia), and the ability to capture the narrative effects of ZK technology.

Opside, currently based on the zk-Rollup concept in the RaaS track, is making good progress. While the network architecture is theoretically feasible, it is in its early stages, and the future development of the ecosystem still poses significant challenges. Users can currently participate in early network experiences and potentially receive airdrop rewards of network tokens.