Microsoft and zkSync together to unlock the potential of Web3

According to a source inside The Block, Microsoft former global head of Web3 business development and AI, Vassilis Tziokas, has joined the Matter Labs team to strengthen the zkSync Era ecosystem.

Tziokas, who has experience of his own at Microsoft, says he wants to unlock the “holy grail” of Web3 with the help of Ethereum’s scalability solution.

zkSync has opened its doors to the veteran tech giant, and is ready to move on to the next step in its roadmap, which is to decentralize its sequencers as much as possible.

In the meantime, the rollup is recording excellent numbers in the blockchain world, confirming it as one of the most dominant infrastructures in the Ethereum layer-2 context.

See all the details below.

Microsoft joins Matter Labs team to help grow zkSync

According to a report by The Block, a former Microsoft veteran has embraced the principles and philosophy of zk solution developer Matter Labs to join the development of the zkSync Era infrastructure.

He is Vassilis Tziokas, former global leader for web3 and AI business development and strategy at Microsoft, who will now become head of enterprise business development for the cryptographic label.

Tziokas, who spent eight years in house at the U.S. tech giant, revealed that he became particularly interested in zkSync after reading the “ZkSync Credo” manifesto that presented in June this year on Github the values and goals that layer-2 intended to pursue in the coming years.

Now, after joining Matter Labs, he intends to unlock the “holy grail” of web3 by drawing the attention of companies to the blockchain space.

In an interview with The Block, he revealed that companies are always looking for new frameworks to create value, but are partly blocked because they are forced to “operate in a clear regulatory environment.”

Tziokas thinks that ZSync represents the right protocol that allows companies to take advantage of this revolution in the digital sphere while maintaining control of their data and experiences in the Web3 space.

As soon as the regulatory uncertainty factor is resolved, the Ethereum rollup could experience a very strong institutional and private interest on its skin, with numerous entities ready to develop their business ideas on the decentralized ZK infrastructure

Continuing the interviewee stated that:

“As zkSync scales Ethereum to be a highly scalable, reliable and cost-effective computing platform, it unlocks a new part of the internet to be build out — whether it’s banking the unbanked, more secure enterprise systems, shared industry-specific protocols to drive efficiencies at global scale or new types of user experiences that naturally come with new computing environments — similar to what we’ve seen with the advent of the internet itself or the mainstream adoption of cloud and mobile.”

The former Microsoft man pointed out that corporate interest in ZK-based services is already current, and cited in this regard the recent launch of the zero-knowledge evidence-based identity solution by the Government of Buenos Aires to store digital documents such as driver’s licenses and certificates.

At the same time, he mentioned the giant Walmart, which last month entered the NFT world with a collection, called Pudgy Penguins, that generated more than $300 million in sales.

The latest developments for the zkSync rollup

The interest of Microsoft’s veteran in the development of the zkSync scaling solution speaks volumes about the potential of the cryptographic network and the fertility of the Web3 environment in which more and more individuals and enterprises want to plant their seed.

Tziokas chose Matter Labs’ infrastructure over other competing layers because the rollup was launched more than 3 years ago and has the best ZK technology around, as well as the most forward-looking vision in terms of ZK Stack.

In recent months zkSync has attracted a lot of attention in the web3 world after concluding a long series of partnerships and achieving excellent numbers in its ecosystem.

Among the most notable partnerships, we must necessarily mention the one with Ankr in July with which the Matter Labs team aims to deploy its ZK and hyperchain nodes within the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

On the achievement front, it is worth noting instead the rollup’s dominance in the Ethereum layer-2 sector where this month it cleaned up by recording the highest number of executed transactions.

With as much as $430 million in TVL, a TP/s number ranging between 10.5 and 12 and an increasingly present application ecosystem in the DeFi world, zkSync stands as the top “Zero Knowledge rollup” in the web3 world, behind only the “optimistic rollups” of Arbitrum, Optimism and Base.

Despite all the medals won and merits celebrated, there are also highlighting flaws to improve and some challenges that Matter Labs and its creation must address between now and the next few years.

As the former global leader for web3 and AI business development and strategy at Microsoft mentioned, zkSync’s biggest problem concerns the centralization of its sequencers and provers, which are currently controlled by the project team.

This creates single points of failure and potential censorship risks that, if enacted, could ruin the reputation of layer-2.

This Imperfection is known to infrastructure insiders and its resolution is among the list of goals to be achieved in the short term.

Tziokas in this regard stated that:

“Decentralizing the protocol is a must. Otherwise, how is it different from centralized cloud or container infrastructure?

Decentralizing access for everyone will be a long journey but we are on the right track.”

According to Matter Labs, the decentralization of its sequencers and provers will be completed within a few months along with the addition of an additional team of third-party developers who will help keep the zkSync protocol and ZK Stack up to date.

Other hurdles to be overcome include a dearth of clear regulations in the web3 world that still creates hesitancy on the part of companies and individuals to invest in the field, as mentioned earlier.

In addition, there are limitations regarding the fragmentation of vendors and the complex UX that rollup developers are facing