ZKsync Proposes Upgrade to Reduce Gas Fees for zkSNARK Verification

According to PANews, ZKsync has announced a new upgrade proposal aimed at optimizing elliptic curve precompilation and introducing a ModExp precompilation feature. This upgrade is expected to significantly reduce the gas fees for verifying typical zkSNARK proofs from approximately 6.8 million to around 370,000, marking a reduction of about 94%. The enhancement will enable elliptic curve operations such as ECAdd, ECMul, and ECPairing to be executed directly within the circuit, thereby lowering the cost of verifying ZK proofs by over 90%. The addition of the ModExp precompilation feature is designed for rapid modular exponentiation, which is crucial for various cryptographic applications, including RSA and ZK proof verification. Importantly, developers will not need to take any action following this upgrade. Existing contracts that rely on these precompilation features will not require redeployment, as calls will automatically resolve to the new circuit implementation. The precompilation upgrade has already been deployed on the ZKsync Era testnet.