Sovereign: A convenient rollup building tool for developers

Sovereign is a project dedicated to building an open and interconnected rollup ecosystem. Its core goal is to enable all developers to deploy rollups that are seamlessly interoperable and scalable, running on various blockchains. To this end, the Sovereign team is developing the Sovereign SDK, a framework aimed at simplifying the creation process of secure and interoperable sovereign zk-rollups.

The Challenges of Blockchain Scalability

Currently, blockchain applications mainly achieve scalability through three methods: dedicated application L1 public chains, optimistic rollups, and zk-rollups.

Although dedicated application L1 public chains are simple to design and deploy, they require significant funding to recruit and incentivize validators, which limits their widespread application.

Optimistic rollups reduce the development threshold by expanding new logic on existing blockchains. However, they rely on fraud proof mechanisms, resulting in longer finality delays, making cross-chain bridging slow and expensive. Developers face a tough choice between specialized rollups and general rollups, both of which have significant drawbacks.

Zk-rollups are considered a more promising scaling solution. They retain the advantages of optimistic rollups while significantly reducing finality latency. However, the technical barrier to building zk-rollups is still quite high, requiring dedicated investment from specialized cryptographic engineers.

Innovation of Sovereign SDK

The Sovereign SDK aims to be the Cosmos SDK of the zk-rollups space. It provides the foundational components required for blockchain, such as p2p networks, databases, and RPC nodes, allowing developers to focus on their business logic. Additionally, it offers a set of default modules that operate efficiently in a zero-knowledge environment, including token deployment, data storage verification, and bridging capabilities.

An important feature of the Sovereign SDK is that it simplifies the complex details of zero-knowledge proofs. Developers do not need to be cryptography experts and can simply use common programming languages such as Rust (with C++ potentially included in the future) to write applications, and the SDK will automatically compile them into an efficient zk virtual machine.

Main Features of Sovereign SDK

1. Seamless Interoperability: Utilizing proof aggregation-based bridging technology to achieve fast and low-cost cross-chain interactions.

2. Security and Scalability: Component design optimized for zk-rollups, providing excellent performance and low latency.

3. Cross-chain compatibility: As a "sovereign" rollup, applications built with the Sovereign SDK can run on any blockchain.

Project Development Roadmap

The development plan for the Sovereign SDK is divided into three phases:

1. Research Phase (Ongoing): Design core modules and APIs, develop research prototypes.

2. Initial deployment phase: Deploy infrastructure and core functionalities.

3. Strengthening Phase: Conduct code optimization, testing, and auditing, and develop the first use case.

Sovereign Labs' vision is to enable blockchain technology to serve billions of users. To achieve this goal, they are committed to lowering the barriers to the use of zero-knowledge technology, allowing ordinary developers to easily build rollups. At the same time, the project adheres to the principles of open source and decentralization, ensuring that the verifiability of end users is not compromised.