Microsoft and zkSync are working together to unlock the potential of Web3

According to a source within The Block, Vassilis Tziokas, former global head of Web3 business development and AI, has joined the Matter Labs team to strengthen the zkSync Era ecosystem.

Tziokas, who has experience at Microsoft, says he wants to unlock the “holy grail” of Web3 using Ethereum’s scalability solution.

zkSync has opened its doors to the veteran tech giant and is ready to move on to the next step in its roadmap, which is decentralizing its sequencers as much as possible.

In the meantime, the package is recording excellent numbers in the blockchain world, confirming that it is one of the most dominant infrastructures in the Ethereum layer-2 context.

Check out all the details below.

Microsoft joins Matter Labs team to help zkSync grow

According to a report from The Block, a former Microsoft veteran has embraced the principles and philosophy of zk solution developer Matter Labs to participate in the development of the zkSync Era infrastructure.

He is Vassilis Tziokasformer global leader in Web3 and AI business development and strategy at Microsoft, who will now head up enterprise development for the cryptographic label.

Tziokas, who spent eight years at the American technology giant, revealed that he became particularly interested in zkSync after reading the ‘ZkSync Credo’ manifesto that presented on Github in June this year the values ​​and goals that layer-2 wanted to pursue in the coming years.

Now, after participating Matter Labshe wants to unlock the ‘holy grail’ of web3 by drawing companies’ attention to the blockchain space.

In an interview with The Block, he revealed that companies are always looking for new frameworks to create value, but are blocked in part because they are forced to “operate in a clear regulatory environment.”

Tziokas thinks ZSync represents the right protocol for businesses to take advantage of this revolution in the digital sphere while maintaining control over their data and experiences in the Web3 space.

Once the regulatory uncertainty factor is resolved, the Ethereum rollup could have a negative impact very strong institutional and private interest on the skin, with countless entities ready to develop their business ideas on the decentralized ZK infrastructure

Further on, the interviewee stated the following:

“As zkSync scales Ethereum into a highly scalable, reliable and cost-effective computing platform, it unlocks a new part of the internet to be built out – whether it’s banking the unbanked, more secure enterprise systems, shared industry-specific protocols to power efficiencies on a global scale or new types of user experiences that naturally come with new computing environments – similar to what we have seen with the advent of the internet itself or the mainstream adoption of cloud and mobile.”

The former Microsoft man pointed out that companies’ interest in ZK-based services is already current, and cited recent developments in this regard launch of the zero-knowledge evidence-based identity solution by the government of Buenos Aires for storing digital documents such as driver’s licenses and certificates.

At the same time he mentioned the giant Walmart, which entered the market last month NFT world with a collectioncalled Pudgy Penguins, which generated sales of more than $300 million.

The latest developments for the zkSync combination package

The Microsoft veteran’s interest in developing the zkSync scaling solution speaks volumes about the potential of the cryptographic network and the fertility of the Web3 environment in which more and more individuals and companies want to plant their seeds.

Tziokas chose Matter Labs infrastructure over other competing layers because the rollup was launched over 3 years ago and has the best ZK technology availableas well as the most forward-looking vision in the field of ZK Stack.

In recent months, zkSync has attracted a lot of attention in the web3 world after inking a long line of partnerships and achieving excellent marks in its ecosystem.

Among the most notable partnerships we must necessarily mention the one with Ankr in July with which the Matter Labs team aims to deploy its ZK and hyperchain nodes within the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

In terms of performance, it’s worth using the the dominance of rollup in Ethereum layer-2 sector where it cleaned up this month by recording the highest number of transactions executed.

With a whopping $430 million in TVL, a TP/s number ranging between 10.5 and 12 and an increasingly present application ecosystem in the DeFi world, zkSync stands as the best “Zero Knowledge rollup” in the web3 worldonly behind the ‘optimistic rollups’ of Arbitrum, Optimism and Base.

Despite all the medals won and achievements celebrated, there are also shortcomings that can be improved and some challenges what Matter Labs and its creation must address between now and the coming years.

As the former global leader in web3 and AI business development and strategy at Microsoft said, zkSync’s biggest problem concerns the centralization of its sequencers and proverscurrently managed by the project team.

This creates discrete points of failure and potential censorship risks that, if implemented, could ruin layer-2’s reputation.

This imperfection is known to infrastructure insiders and its solution is among the list of goals to be achieved in the short term.

Tziokas stated in this regard that:

“Decentralizing the protocol is a must. How else is it different from a centralized cloud or container infrastructure?

Decentralizing access for all will be a long road, but we are on the right track.”

According to Matter Labs, the decentralization of its sequencers and provers will be completed within months along with the addition of an additional team of third-party developers who will help keep the zkSync protocol and ZK Stack up to date.

Other obstacles to overcome include the lack of clear regulations in the web3 world, which still causes hesitation among companies and individuals to invest in this field, as previously mentioned.

In addition, there are restrictions regarding the fragmentation of suppliers and the complex UX that rollup developers face