Aave Community Members Vote to Deploy on zkSync v2 Testnet

Community members in the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave voted on Wednesday to deploy the protocol to the zkSync 2.0 testnet. The successful vote marks the first stage of Aave's rollout to the new version of the zkSync platform, a layer 2 rollup network on Ethereum that offers users faster transactions and cheaper fees.

Originally put forward by Matter Labs, the firm behind zkSync, the Aave proposal received overwhelming support from community members, with nearly 100% in favor of bringing the decentralized lending service to the Ethereum rollup’s testnet.

Like other Ethereum rollup platforms, zkSync 2.0 is a layer 2 network that aims to scale the famously sluggish, expensive Ethereum base chain. It bundles up transactions and passes them back down to Ethereum's layer 1 blockchain, where they are processed in bulk for a fraction of the cost of regular transactions.

Though Aave has previously launched on other layer 2 platforms, zkSync will mark the first time it has embraces a zero-knowledge rollup – a more advanced, still-in-development alternative to Ethereum's incumbent rollup platforms.

zkSync uses fancy cryptography – so-called called zero-knowledge proofs – to prove that the data it passes down to Ethereum's main chain has not been meddled with. It aims to be among the first products to make this technology accessible to virtually any app that currently runs on Ethereum.

The proposal noted that if liquidity on Aave’s decentralized exchange (DEX) improves, there will be a follow-up vote to bring the DeFi protocol to the zkSync 2.0 mainnet – the production version of the system. Today, the production version of zkSync 2.0, which is still in its "baby alpha" phase, has very limited capabilities.

Steve Newcomb, chief product officer at Matter Labs, told CoinDesk that Aave will be a prominent partner in helping bring the rollup to its mainnet in the long term.

“We are building a scaling solution that will enable significant cost savings and performance improvement without affecting security or decentralization, and we want that to be accessible to the whole Ethereum ecosystem and its projects,” Newcomb said.

Aave’s move to zkSync 2.0's testnet follows a similar move from Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange platform, whose community voted to deploy onto the rollup last month.

Aave is the largest decentralized lending platform, with nearly $10 billion locked across all versions of its platform according to DefiLlama.