- 6/30/2025
In this episode, Ghan Vashishtha (Co-founder & CTO of Zeeve) sits down with Vassilis Tziokas, Head of Ecosystem Growth at Matter Labs (ZkSync), to unpack the explosive potential of Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology.
From scaling Ethereum to enabling privacy and interoperability, Vassilis explores why ZK may be blockchain’s “end game.” He dives into use cases, addresses enterprise concerns, and breaks down innovations like ZkSync’s shared bridge and the ZK Gateway.
Whether you're a developer, enterprise leader, or blockchain enthusiast, this podcast is your gateway to understanding the future of ZK and ZkSync.
From scaling Ethereum to enabling privacy and interoperability, Vassilis explores why ZK may be blockchain’s “end game.” He dives into use cases, addresses enterprise concerns, and breaks down innovations like ZkSync’s shared bridge and the ZK Gateway.
Whether you're a developer, enterprise leader, or blockchain enthusiast, this podcast is your gateway to understanding the future of ZK and ZkSync.
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TechTranscript
00:00so welcome to web3voice again you've been here many times and i think our audience loves to hear
00:08you every time and this time it's going to be even better because you're not just going to be
00:13here today but you're going to be with us during 8th denver roll up an option day as a keynote
00:18speaker and i'm excited and i think everybody would be to learn more from you because you know
00:24when i saw this recent post from you on linkedin it says vk is the end game and you're creating
00:29the most partner obsessed ecosystem that that you know that aligned well with what web3 has been
00:37all about for years you know an ecosystem and and you know full with uh full with people trying to
00:43contribute growing it together so so when you say vk is the end game vassalus what is it you know which
00:49comes to your head first and you know you want to tell people about sure before i answer your question
00:56gun and ravi thank you again for inviting me it's an honor um zk sync matter labs to be more accurate
01:04and ziv have been long-standing partners and it's been amazing working with you thank you again for
01:09the invitation both on this podcast but also on the upcoming east denver um event that you're running
01:14so that's number one um number two uh i have this ocd with introduction so maybe for people who do not
01:21know me my name is vassilis i am i am leading ecosystem success for matter labs which is the
01:26company the main contributor of zk sync the theorem l2 so that's more of housekeeping so again now i'm
01:33going back to your question um thank you for uh mentioning the post that i made on linkedin and
01:38it's not let's say my tagline the zk zk is the end game is one of our core taglines as a company
01:46and as an ecosystem and uh so it's not let's say mine it's not my invention i think alex uh our
01:52ceo alex blikowski was the one who coined it uh but like what does it mean it means that if we
01:58really want to scale blockchains and ethereum to be more accurate because we're in ethereum l2
02:03zk is the only way that this can happen the only mathematically and scientifically proven way like
02:09who knows in the future maybe something about quantum like like at the moment with as much as we
02:15have advanced the science of cryptography and blockchain we know that zk zero knowledge
02:20technology is the most efficient scalable way uh to take ethereum to the next level and that's why
02:27we call it zk is the end game and i want to see something else here um because zk sync is not the
02:32only l2 that is uh building using the zk technology the reason we believe that zk is the end game is
02:40because we see and actually we're very happy and we're very proud to see that pretty much
02:44every ecosystem in ethereum and even outside ethereum but i will stick in ethereum right now
02:50is adopting zk technology we see other l2s very successful ones like arbitrum and optimism which
02:57are great ecosystems right being more open about zk uh and trying to adopt this technology to scale
03:03so i gave you a very long answer god but this is what it is right we believe that zk is the end game
03:07because if we really want to scale ethereum it is the only technology that can take us to that level
03:12yeah no i think every time when you say that zk is the end game it sounds so fitting and
03:17and you know believable and and you know we believe in it we believe and sorry to interrupt you
03:23maybe i'm sounding like i believe it because i truly believe it that's why i'm working in this
03:28company that's why zk sync is named zk sync that's how much we believe in it right we have made it part
03:34of our brand and our logo and our existence and our ethos uh so yeah we truly believe in it and
03:39we're very happy to see the industry adopting it widely no i think we believe it along with you
03:44because we've been working on zk sync stack delivering you know there's these layer two
03:48chains to a lot of customers basically the same stack and we found it very innovative very future
03:53driven and very stable in terms of what it can deliver but you know we we often hear people
03:59saying in zk space that zk is more privacy driven it is not for everyone but then at the same time
04:05you know the use cases we've been delivering and the use cases we hear zk sync announcing every
04:10month multiple use cases onboarding zk sync as a stack building their layer twos they are pretty
04:15much in every space the you you see gaming you see defi you you see fintech banking you see telecom
04:22so what are these areas which you believe are you know are you know topping the chart when it comes
04:28to traction and then utilizing and benefiting from zk the most but at the same time you know your
04:32your general view about that who zk is for is it really for everybody it's a good question right
04:39because um i think many people associate zk with security and privacy as you said yes but zk is also
04:46about scalability and for me those two uh attributes security slash privacy and scalability
04:53are what's the right word are neutral what i mean by that is that you can take them and they're like
05:00magic boxes that you can build on top anything you want it gives you freedom right so um we are not
05:07a chain that is um favoring private only based use cases right that's why scalability is also a very
05:16big component of it so i don't necessarily agree that zk is specifically um uh you know tuned to
05:24to to a very special kind of use cases because you can take the scalability aspect of zk not only the
05:29privacy one but both of them create a very magic mix so you're right we have a lot of gaming
05:35ecosystems right now on the zk stack um soft one abstract treasure uh zk candy xpla like you name
05:45it right and the reason they are coming to us and we're very happy to have them as our partners
05:49is not so much about the privacy aspect of it it's about the scalability we scale extremely fast
05:55and we are cheap so that's what they want right but then you see gun as you said a different kind of
06:02uh family of use cases which are more of the financial side of things right we yesterday we
06:08announced our partnership with wonderfully wonderfully is the leading crypto company in canada um
06:13who have the very successful pilots with ubs and deutsche bank and memento that i know that
06:19memento is working with ziv pretty closely and those and we see many enterprises wanting to build on
06:26the zk stack because of the privacy and the validium aspect of our zk stack it gives them freedom to be
06:35able to use a public chain where while at the same time being able to customize it on a privacy
06:41customizability and and um permissioned chain so i would i would summarize my answer in the following
06:49way zk is a black box sorry it's a magic box not a black box it's a magic box that pretty much you
06:55can build anything you want and you can pick the attribute of zk that fits best your your use case
07:00if you're gaming you want scalability if you're a bank you want a permission validium like as i said
07:06it's a magic box that you can twist around and you can shape it you can mold it based on the use case
07:12you want yeah no i think that's a fantastic uh you know perspective to how it is to be seen as a
07:19technology or a framework and and where it can fit and how it can fit uh though we are still seeing
07:24uh that you know enterprises they're coming on board already it's not that they're not joining the
07:29the the you know uh the wave but then they're still coming in slow so what factors do you
07:35i think you know are important for enterprises when they you know pick a stack like say zk sync
07:40and and you know what scares them and why it should not scare them anymore
07:44it's something that we have been thinking and discussing a lot internally but also discussing
07:50that with you in our private calls right with ziv i don't think there is one answer there are
07:55multiple answers right answer number one is definitely how they can build something that will be
08:02customized on their needs when you are a huge bank a huge financial institution and enterprise or even
08:08a government we're working also with governments for example we're working with the municipality
08:13of buenos aires so when you're working with this type of customers
08:17you need to provide them something that will be checking all their boxes for example when you're a bank
08:24the box is compliance and uh security and you know um consumer orientation number one um when you're a
08:32government you want to make sure that the citizens data will never be tampered right so right answer number one
08:38is that your stack in that case is the zk stack needs to give them flexibility and it's not a monolithic
08:43box right that they will be able to shape around while always settling on ethereum that's that's the power of it right
08:52you still can use the public chain but you can customize it on your or your need uh i want to
08:57say a very quick personal story here i came uh i came my previous employer was microsoft i spent many
09:03years of my life at microsoft right and i was part of the crypto team there at my last gig and we were
09:09working with many banks when i was at microsoft and you know back then we were discussing about
09:13earth recorder and hyper ledger again great teams i don't have any personal anything personal with
09:18them right but let's be honest the private blockchains were a very was a was a is an outdated
09:23concept right now because you can have exactly the same privacy and permission and customizability
09:30but still use ethereum so that's answer number one we we customizability and flexibility and i think
09:37number two done uh so the number two answer to your question is that you need to have a team
09:42or a partner ecosystem in that case for us this is a ziv where they know that they can rely on
09:51from an sla from a compliance from a business acumen from a strategy from a delivery sense of
09:58things right so if you are a big bank you want to work with a company that we you will sleep well at
10:03night you will know that they will deliver on time they will have slas they will have the right pricing
10:08they will have a partner success team to handle more for change management it's a whole list of
10:13things but i would say this is the heart and the soft so the hard one is the hard skills and the soft
10:18skills the hard one is technology being a very customizable box and the soft skills is having a team
10:27that they can rely on from a business strategy and reliability perspective
10:31absolutely uh and i think it's not just that us you know we've been uh uh working hard to deliver
10:39zk stack to these customers but we at the same time have seen that zk sync is very supportive you
10:44know the team at your end they're very supportive the engineering team the the tech folks you know they
10:49they very actively support us uh you know with new releases and the patches the fixes and you know
10:55different configurations which can be which can be you know in demand or should we try it out with
11:00these use cases so i think it's a joint effort there and uh you know we really uh we really
11:06appreciate you know zk sync coming in that way and supporting and understanding what what the
11:11customers require and changing and maneuvering fast thank you thank you for saying this gun and i will
11:16say first of all it means a lot coming from you right uh but number two i would say that this is
11:20something that and i we tweeted about it i think a few months ago we made a very conscious decision
11:25a few months ago inside the company motherlabs where we said that uh you know we have now reached
11:32a maturity level as a chain as an ecosystem where we need to start having an official and robust
11:40ecosystem success team right again for those who are coming from the web2 world there is this uh
11:45muscle called partner success right it's very it's very popular in web2 right all the big tech
11:51companies have a partner success and of course every company has a different flavor but like
11:54and i don't i think that if you ask my truly personal opinion forget zk sync that's vasilis's
12:00uh you know opinion is that that's one of the things that really the web3 industry is lacking
12:06right we are very we meaning the industry we are an industry that um unfortunately in my opinion
12:13favors a lot big splash announcements oh you know zk sync sign with this or x sign it's all about
12:19what you're saying right but as but as we as we learned dan is that the real work starts after
12:25you sign not before you sign sure you should celebrate a big deal of course let's let's not
12:31be naive but the real work starts after the signature right do you have a team of people
12:36engineers partner success go to market strategies pr marketing do you have a team that will sit down
12:42either with the partner itself or with them with the software as a service partner in that case
12:48you're they're all up as a service partner right um to help them and uh thank you for saying that
12:52we're doing that in a good way in in full honesty as the leader of the team i think we're going to
12:57extremely better we're still at the first inning but uh we're definitely going there yeah like they
13:03say you know that that the team's effort reflects and you know the leader's thoughts so i think you
13:08know you leading the partnership teams and partnership ecosystem is doing a fantastic job there
13:13and we're just you know trying to support as much as we can now uh you know coming towards uh we
13:19talked about the use cases we talked about zk is the end game you know the conviction i think everybody
13:24really enjoys you know when you say it that way but then uh you know if we if we talk about the pace
13:29at which this this you know adoption is happening so how many how many uh you know zk sync based
13:34rollups do you see uh happening coming to existence and in 2025 a few hundreds a few thousands maybe
13:40in double digits that's a tough one yeah no no i'm smiling because i'm laughing in a good way in
13:47the sense that uh i can answer in two ways i can answer on how much how many i expect and how many
13:52i wish they are not the same but uh keeping aside right now gun we have approximately i need to check
13:59the latest number but we'll have i would say more than 20 chains some of them are on mainnet some of
14:03them are coming up they're on testnet some of them are uh announced as i said yesterday we announced
14:08wonderfully so this is where we are right now i joined the team gun i joined matter labs in october
14:152023 so a year and a half later we were a year and a half and back then when we went assigned we had
14:21no change zk stack was still a concept right so if i look back one year and a half we have made amazing
14:29progress but as i said and you also said we're still not to where we want to be right the adoption
14:35is still slow so my if you want my very open and transparent prediction i would say that by end
14:41of the year by end of 2025 i definitely expect us to be reaching the first three digit number of
14:50chains hopefully so if we have like 2025 now i think we can we can reach uh 100 by end of the year
14:57i know it's a very ambitious but that's that's why they're called ambitions because they have to be
15:01um uh very very forward-looking so but also it's not only about the casing i want to be
15:07fair about other ecosystems there are other ecosystems that are doing great arbitrage is doing great optimism
15:13is doing great um so i i do see in a future where the ethereum ecosystem will be having thousands of
15:21chains and the problem that we will have to solve the big boss problem uh which is still it's now
15:28all but it will become the bigger problem in the future is how all those chains regardless of
15:33whether they're on gksync or optimism or arbitrum or linear or scroll or whatever or polygon they will
15:39be interoperating uh we're not there we're not there yet let's be honest let's also be honest this
15:46is a huge problem because if you are a web2 user you don't care if abstract is on gk stack and i don't
15:56know wall coin is an optimist like you don't care you just want an interoperability we're not there
16:00yet we as matter labs we are trying to solve the interoperability the native interoperability of all
16:06the gk chains it is part of our roadmap it is coming in q2 and we're very excited about this but as i
16:11said if we want to really be ambitious about the theorem ecosystem uh every chain in the theorem should
16:17interpret with another and i think this will be the big boss problem probably in 2026
16:22right rightly said the elephant in the room is the interoperability and we need to address it and i
16:28think zk is making good strides uh the shared bridge is is you know one step in that direction which is
16:35going to unite all the zk stack based layer two chains to begin with i believe and i think i think
16:41this is not where you're going to stop um you know i i'm speculating but that may be true
16:46i would say um what i can say is that and it's a very good point dan i would highly recommend the
16:53people who are listening to this podcast or to this interview is to go to our github and our website
16:59or even follow anthony rose anthony rose is the cto of the company very smart and very um i would say
17:06a great leader in engineering he recently posted something about the zk gateway that's that's the name
17:12of it yeah gateway is the name of our shared bridge and you will be able to read all the details about
17:16how we expect this gateway to be the the glue that not only connects the zk chains in a native way
17:24but also optimizes the cost for the on-chain verification by by batching all the proofs
17:30together so forth and so on i'm not going to go into the details there but yeah so for now what i can
17:34say is that the zk gateway is our holy grail for 2025 it's part of our roadmap we will deliver
17:40it's coming in q2 so if i summarize the focus is three digits and the focus is interoperability
17:48and so there is a there is a technical roadmap so there is a technical goal technical objectives
17:54and business objectives um from technical roadmap it's very simple again it's communicated but i want
18:00to reiterate that three big pillars evm equivalents the most important thing also let's be honest
18:07right now building conjugation is not as easy as it is in our chain yes right we are evm compatible
18:15we are not evm equivalent right so evm equivalents it's coming already through an interpreter and then
18:20through our new proving system number two our new proving system boot zoom two and our new operating
18:28system and number three interoperability so from a technical perspective is this from a business
18:34perspective uh that i am part of of the leadership team uh me and omar my colleague we are working
18:39on two goals number one is having as many institutions in the payments in the banking in the financial
18:48sector building on zk stack picking zk stack as the default choice for them to come on chain
18:53and number two is uh is continue growing our amazing gaming ecosystem as i said with abstract
19:00so phone treasure x plus ek candy so forth and so on which will lead to the hundreds of chains so uh
19:09that's the end goal yes and i think uh nothing more interesting in than than hearing about you know
19:15the growth of uh roll-ups and specifically the zero knowledge space happening and the way you uh termed it
19:22in 2025 now you know one last thing before you know i'll let you go today and that is about because
19:28you're coming to eat denver you're coming to the role of an app chain day you're going to be talking
19:33about something so this is for you know all those folks who are going to be there and and with full
19:39excitement and interest what two primary things you know they would be uh hearing from you that day
19:45um first of all i'm also excited and again thank you for the invitation they will hear from me what
19:52is coming up in more details in the next months for for the zk stack right it will be a little bit more
19:59technical than the current conversation so if they really want to understand how we're going to achieve
20:04even equivalence what is the new prover system uh budgeum 2.0 we call it right now it's called budgeum
20:10and the new it's going to be called budgeum 2.0 which are the performance uh benchmark that we are
20:15we are seeing so if they want to get a sneak peek of what's coming up on zk stack they can definitely
20:21come and hear and i would say the second thing is uh uh me and you can we know each other from our
20:28business relationship it's actually it will not come from me it will come from us i i am someone who
20:33believes a lot in conversation and open discussion and questions i'm actually very eager to hear others
20:40from the theorem ecosystem to hear their plans and i think the the most important thing in an event
20:45uh gun is not the the top-down approach oh vasilis will share this it's more about hey
20:51vasilis and gun and the arbitrum folks and the polygon folks and the optimism folks and the avalanche
20:56folks sitting down together and just having powerful conversations because uh the the last thing i
21:01will say which i think is the most inspiring note like uh this is something i truly believe in
21:06the crypto pie is still very small right the market is still small if we want to be honest
21:13yes so yes of course i want gk sync to win uh i'm part of matter labs uh of the matter labs company
21:19but like i want ethereum to win and actually i want crypto to win so i don't know if that sounds
21:25correct but like when i see announcements from other ecosystems i'm happy for them i truly am i think
21:30we're all here to make the crypto buy bigger if we make the the pie bigger everyone will be happy
21:37if we keep fighting about over crumbles it will be a very uh zero-sum game so i think you know
21:46yeah no i think you had me when you said interoperability already and it's nobody's game
21:50it's everybody's game to win together and i think you know we've been we've been working on this very
21:55hard uh you know since the the beginning of the roll-up and app chain day and and you know this
21:59chapter which is going to take place in each center that we bring everybody together all the voices
22:03together and all sort of you know ecosystems together so that you know we we generate the
22:07best opinions the best outcomes the best best future roadmap for the ecosystem and ethereum
22:12ecosystem specifically together so i think you know your presence would be uh highly highly valuable
22:19of course a lot more other voices would be there which will make it more uh you know more uh integral
22:25in terms of you know how people will take away you know the the growth overall so yeah we would be
22:30really really happy to have you there and you know all the ones who are listening my name is
22:34gan vasheesh i'm the co-founder and cto at zeev and we'll be waiting for you at eat denver vasilis will
22:39be there and so many others prolific speakers and uh you know well-known leaders thought leaders in
22:46the web 3 ecosystem roll-up ecosystem specifically for you to you know uh learn more and and take
22:52key takeaways that will help you drive your your way into web 3 as well as you know the journey into
22:59the layer 2 ecosystem so thank you vasilis uh you know for for joining us today it was a pleasure
23:05but this is not going to end today this is just the beginning of what comes on the roll-up and
23:11action day on 28th of february during east denver so thank you very much see you in a week
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