Kakarot zkEVM, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) implemented in Cairo, announced on June 2 that it has closed its pre-seed funding round. The investors include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Ledger co-founder and VP of innovation Nicolas Bacca, and blockchain scaling firm Starkware, among others. In this article we will look into Kakarot zkEVM’s details.
Kakarot zkEVM: An Implemented EVM In cairo
Kakarot, which is currently categorized as a type 3 zkEVM (soon to be type 2.5), is constructed on the CairoVM framework. This project was initiated in October 2022 with several objectives in mind: to be open-source from the very beginning, welcome contributions from the community, and most notably, create a zkEVM with less than 10,000 lines of code. Remarkably, this goal was achieved in just six months.
The CairoVM, a virtual machine enabling provable execution, serves as the underlying infrastructure for Starknet, a general-purpose Layer 2 (L2) validity rollup within the Ethereum ecosystem.
The CairoVM’s capability to represent execution as polynomials enables the use of STARKs to prove every transaction on Starknet.
Consequently, developers are required to build decentralized applications (dApps) in Cairo, the associated programming language. Programs written in Cairo are provable, offering a game-changing advantage of writing provable programs in a high-level language. This eliminates the need for developers to construct circuits when leveraging the scalability feature of zero-knowledge cryptography.
Therefore, the question arises: would rewriting the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in Cairo result in a zkEVM?
The initial idea was straightforward: the EVM, as a well-established VM architecture, consists of 142 opcodes, 9 precompiles, and a democratic process for updating these opcodes or precompiles. The concept was to build it in Cairo and obtain a zkEVM “for free,” meaning that the scaling property of zero-knowledge would be obtained as a direct consequence. Spoiler alert: the answer is yes.
This idea gained momentum within the Starknet community, and in October 2022, Abdel, the lead of Starkware’s exploration team and a member of the core Ethereum developer team, began implementing it. Around the same time, the open-source builder community of Starknet, with the assistance of Onlydust, embarked on a similar project. Eventually, the former absorbed the latter during StarknetCC in Lisbon.
A hacker house in Lisbon became the venue for a week-long dedicated effort involving approximately ten individuals building a zkEVM. The core team of Kakarot was formed, realizing the feasibility and power of their endeavor.
They managed to create a naive implementation of a zkEVM that required less than 5,000 lines of code, without the need for circuits or polynomials. The Starknet Foundation and Onlydust provided support for this adventure, with a commitment to open-source principles, open contributions, and a community-driven technical strategy.
The coordination of this effort was led by Clément and the narrator. Presently, Kakarot boasts over 40 unique contributors. While Kakarot is in the process of incorporating to establish itself as a production-grade zkEVM, its commitment to open-source principles and external contributions remains unchanged.
As of May 2023, Kakarot has achieved 100% bytecode equivalence (equivalent to type 3 zkEVM) and has implemented 8 out of the 9 EVM precompiles. It is expected to complete the implementation of all nine precompiles soon, thus reaching type 2.5 according to Vitalik’s classification.
Consequently, dApps developed in Solidity or any other language supported by EVM can be deployed onto Kakarot without requiring any modifications to the existing code.
Pre-seed Round
Kakarot zkEVM, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) implemented in Cairo, announced on June 2 that it has closed its pre-seed funding round. The investors include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Ledger co-founder and VP of innovation Nicolas Bacca, and blockchain scaling firm Starkware, among others.
As outlined in the project roadmap, the initial phase of Kakarot involves it becoming an EVM on the Starknet Layer 2. The team believes that introducing the Kakarot zkEVM to Starknet will unlock a wide array of possibilities and contribute to the expansion of the Starknet ecosystem.
In the subsequent phase, Kakarot and Starknet’s Madara sequencer will be merged into a unified stack, facilitating the implementation of Layer 3 zkEVMs. This integration is expected to assist teams in deploying zkEVM app chains and settling transactions on Starknet using validity proofs.
Elaborating on the advantages of this integration, the team highlighted the following:
As a result of computing on another layer, gas costs are (asymptotically) exponentially lower than on L2, and performance (TPS) is higher. The scalability of rollups stacks and multiplies.
In the future, Kakarot aims to connect with native Starknet protocols and enable different protocols to work together.
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