=nil;The Foundation has appointed a new CEO to lead Layer 2 efforts to advance scaling technology on Ethereum. During this period, the Ethereum ecosystem has seen much more use of such networks.
Avi Zurlo is the CEO of the foundation behind =nil. (also known as Nil) leverages the power of zkSharding technology to further its mission of increasing transaction speed and throughput (number of transactions processed per second) on Ethereum. His term began Monday.
“If you believe that Bitcoin has the potential to replace or become a significant competitor to gold, or that stablecoins have the potential to continue to grow until they reach a multi-trillion dollar market cap, then ( At that time) existing blockchain infrastructure will fail,” Zurlo told Decrypt.
ZkSharding is a scaling technology that uses zero-knowledge (zk) technology to validate transactions across different layer 2 shards or network fragments before sending them to Ethereum’s mainnet. The goal is to scale Ethereum horizontally by adding nodes to the system rather than increasing existing data processing power.
Zurlo will take up the Layer 2 Development Foundation’s top office after serving as chief product officer for approximately one year. Prior to joining =nil;, he spent several years at the Foundation leading investments at crypto-native companies such as Delphi Digital and Jungle Startup Studio.
He told Decrypt that he sees this appointment as an opportunity to make zkProofs more accessible to developers on Ethereum. Currently, many scaling solutions focus on using rollup technology, which Zurlo says can lead to higher prices for network transactions.
“There are still major problems with the current state of blockchain design,” Zurlo said. “This is where nil comes in and the zkSharding design is born.”
Ethereum’s roadmap identifies scalability as a key issue on the network, as increased user activity is pushing the network into “certain capacity limits.”
Ethereum’s mainnet can currently process between 7 and 15 transactions per second. By comparison, global payments network Visa reports processing more than 65,000 transactions per second, according to its website.
As a result, cheaper, faster-scaling networks are starting to play a more prominent role in the Ethereum ecosystem, with chains such as Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, and Base attracting many users in recent years.
“There is no bigger problem[with Ethereum]than scalability,” Zurlo said. “We want to pour as much fuel into this fire as possible.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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