Hermez Network Zk-Rollups Launch On Ethereum Mainnet

Los Angeles (CoinChapter) – Hermez Network announced the launch of its zk-rollup mainnet release. To help process cheaper transaction costs than Ethereum.

Hermez supports several major tokens including Ether, Wrapped BTC, Tether and Dai. The network also has integration for HEZ, which is Hermez’s token.

Zk-rollups use zero knowledge proofs to verify the correctness of a large batch of transactions. An outside ecosystem completes these transactions and generates proofs for them. Which are posted directly on the Ethereum blockchain.

This helps save more than 10 times the block space when compared to Ethereum. With Hermez transactions weighing just 10 bytes on the main chain. That’s compared to more than 100 bytes for a standard Ether transfer.

The zk-rollup requires depositing funds to a smart contract and withdrawing them to use in the Ethereum mainnet. However, these funds can be withdrawn immediately from the layer two.

Said Pol Lanski, lead of ecosystem development at Hermez. “It’s an automated volume limitation on withdrawals that is implemented in the smart contracts as an additional checkpoint to identify the network’s anomalous behavior.

“This limitation will kick in automatically only when a sudden high volume of funds withdrawal is detected. And the objective is to give the developer team some time to verify the system. And determine whether the funds are being withdrawn legitimately.”

Despite the encouraging results, fostering layer two adoption seems to be harder than first anticipated. Payments-only systems can only be used for transferring funds between exchanges. Or paying for products in centralized ecosystems that support layer-two.

Cons of payment-only systems

A downside is that it cannot be directly used with DeFi. As it would require users to withdraw and redeposit funds each time.

That said, the Tether and USDC contracts are among the largest “gaz guzzlers” on the network. So even a payments-only rollup should help with processing lower fees than Ethereum.