ConsenSys Has Built an Ethereum Scaling Solution With Mastercard

Key Takeaways

ConsenSys is launching a ZK-Rollup solution with Mastercard.
ConsenSys Rollups will focus on offering scalability and privacy, facilitating up to 10,000 transactions per second on private chains.
Mastercard has become increasingly involved in crypto in recent months. Its latest play highlights its support for Ethereum.

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ConsenSys Rollups will use zero-knowledge proofs to scale Ethereum. 

ConsenSys Partners With Mastercard 

ConsenSys is releasing an Ethereum scaling solution with Mastercard. 

The leading Ethereum software company announced the launch of ConsenSys Rollups Thursday, detailing how the solution would provide “scalability and privacy capabilities” to permissioned apps connected to any blockchain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine. According to the blog post announcing the solution, ConsenSys co-designed the software with Mastercard’s engineering team. 

ConsenSys Rollups can be used on Ethereum mainnet or Quorum, the firm’s private blockchain network. The solution leverages ZK-Rollups, which use cryptographic proofs to allow one party to demonstrate their knowledge of a piece of data without sharing the actual information. ZK-Rollups have found use as a scalability solution on Ethereum as they create a way to process transactions without committing all of the data to the base chain. This allows for higher throughput and reduces the cost per transaction. 

Per the announcement, ConsenSys Rollups will have capacity for up to 10,000 transactions per second on private chains, 300 tps on private chains, and 15 on Ethereum mainnet. 

Madeline Murray, Global Lead of Protocol Engineering at ConsenSys, spoke of the technology’s potential to improve blockchain privacy, saying: 

“ConsenSys Rollups enables vastly more scalability in addition to strong privacy protections to both enhance solutions for existing use-cases and enable new use-cases. This innovative solution will help accelerate the building of the future of finance.”

Scaling solutions like ConsenSys Rollups form part of the ongoing mission to build out Ethereum’s Layer 2. As the network has grown in popularity, Ethereum has hit capacity in its current state. This has led to high gas fees that make using the network unaffordable for most users. Many of Ethereum’s competitors offer far lower fees, which has helped them boom throughout this year. Besides the eventual addition of sharding, Ethereum’s main scalability weapons are ZK-Rollups and Optimistic Rollups. Many solutions like Arbitrum are already gaining widespread use today, attracting Ethereum’s leading DeFi projects. 

ConsenSys says that the new solution could facilitate a variety of promising use cases, including CBDCs, scalable decentralized exchanges, and micropayments. As with other ZK-Rollup solutions, ConsenSys Rollups will be compatible with all ERC-20 tokens. 

While ConsenSys has long been at the forefront of crypto innovation, Mastercard has become increasingly involved throughout this year as the technology has gone mainstream. The payments giant has taken several major steps hinting at its interest in the space, including a partnership with Circle to settle USDC payments. Now, the launch of ConsenSys Rollups suggests that the firm is making a clear commitment to supporting the future of Ethereum.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies. 

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