The =nil; protocol, an Ethereum layer-2 solution utilizing zero-knowledge sharding, has reached a significant milestone with the launch of its first public testnet. Announced by =nil; Foundation on October 30, the testnet v1 marks a crucial step towards the project’s mainnet release.
Prior to the public testnet, developers had the opportunity to test the platform’s proof of concept on a devnet. Now, with the launch of =nil; Testnet v1, a wider audience can participate in testing the zkRollup protocol and provide valuable feedback.
The focus of this release is on enhancing the development experience and gathering feedback from users. Developers can now explore an expanded ecosystem of decentralized applications using zkSharding on the testnet. This allows for the identification of potential bugs and stress testing of various applications, as well as the development of necessary tooling.
Introduced in November 2023, =nil;’s Ethereum zkRollup aims to scale the Ethereum network to over 60,000 transactions per second through zkSharding. This innovative approach combines zero-knowledge Rollup with sharding to enable parallel transaction processing while maintaining a shared state. This scalability solution addresses issues such as liquidity and security fragmentation, composability with Ethereum’s mainnet, and data transparency and verifiability.
The testnet launch brings =nil; closer to its roadmap goal of launching the mainnet in Q4 2025. Subsequent phases, including v2 and v3 in Q2 and Q3 2025, will focus on zkEVM, performance testing, stability, and user experience improvements before the mainnet release.
The =nil; protocol’s advancements in zero-knowledge sharding offer promising solutions to scalability challenges on the Ethereum network. With the successful launch of the testnet, the project is one step closer to revolutionizing the way decentralized applications are built and operated on Ethereum.