Zerosync is Trying To Reduce Bitcoin’s Node Validation Costs

The use of ZKP (zero-knowledge proofs) can help significantly reduce the computational costs of Bitcoin node validation.

ZKPs have been a topic of discussion in the crypto space for over ten years now. Even the creator of Bitcoin was aware of the potential of ZKPs and was convinced that they can be used in Bitcoin node validation. The concept was introduced as early as 2010.

Experts have always believed that ZKP was a Bitcoin feature that never got enough attention for implementation. However, if it gets implemented, it can provide the crypto market with lots of value and utility.

Zero Knowledge Proofs helps validate Bitcoin transactions by proving that you own some information without revealing the key points or getting into complications. This can help resolve complex tasks and small proofs.

Complicated Bitcoin smart contracts require the uploading of lots of witness data on the blockchain to allow the unlocking and spending of those coins. The data, in many cases, is either too large or too expensive to compute and upload on the blockchain for verification purposes.

A complication of a smart contact being directly proportional to the expensiveness of its verification to spend the coins is a conventional tradeoff of blockchain technology.

ZKPs have always been shown as a method to change the expensive verification of cryptocurrency transactions. With the help of these, seemingly complicated script conditions can be proved with the help of small pieces of constant data which can help meet the set conditions easily.

Ring signatures are a very basic example of ZKP implementation. It consists of one key from the large assortment of keys without revealing any information about the key being used.

Zerosync Project

Zerosync is finally being implemented into the Bitcoin network in the form of the Zerosync Project. The project has nothing to do with Bitcoin smart contracts or locking/ unlocking the cryptocurrency for regular use. Rather, the project is being used to make Bitcoin transaction processing much easier and faster on nodes.

However, keep in mind that the project is not going to be implemented overnight. That is because a ZKP requires specific protocols to be designed for every task that needs to be verified. Every task needs its proof protocol for easy and automated validation.

At the moment, Zerosync is working on verifying all the witness data, verifying block contents, and block header proofs to improve the functionality of Bitcoin verification.

Reducing BTCs Computational Costs If the Zerosync Project is successful, it will dramatically reduce the computational costs of Bitcoin node validation. For comparison, the Bitcoin blockchain is currently 500 GB in size.

This increases the costs of running a validating client for many users and keeps them away from doing so. The bandwidth required to download the whole Bitcoin blockchain is still very expensive in many parts of the world. If successful, Zerosync can reduce the bandwidth to a few GBs.