In-depth essays · #9 / 50 · L2 Rollups, Federations & Interoperability

The Many Flavors of ZK Rollups: Bytecode zkEVMs, Cairo’s Custom VM, and OP Succinct

Why Scroll, Linea, ZKsync Era, Starknet, and Mantle each took a distinct path to zero-knowledge scaling

Walk through the northern ZK Rollup quarter of Ethereum City and you will notice something striking: unlike the western Superchain quarter where every chain runs the OP Stack, the northern districts—Scroll, Linea, ZKsync Era, Abstract, Starknet, Mantle, and Katana—run a rich variety of architectures. Here is why.

1. Vitalik’s zkEVM Spectrum: Compatibility vs. Proving Speed

When the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) was designed in 2014, zero-knowledge proofs were not yet practical for general computation. Operations like Keccak-256 hashing and 256-bit stack math are fast on an ordinary CPU but require huge numbers of constraints inside an arithmetic circuit.

ZK rollup architects therefore faced a fundamental trade-off: stay 100% faithful to EVM bytecode so existing contracts migrate seamlessly, or redesign the virtual machine around ZK-friendly math for faster, cheaper proofs.

2. Bytecode-Level Equivalence: Scroll and Linea

Scroll and Consensys’s Linea chose bytecode-level compatibility. Their zkEVMs prove the execution of standard EVM bytecode directly, allowing Solidity developers and auditing tools to deploy without rewriting contracts or learning new compiler quirks.

3. ZK-Optimized VMs and Cairo: ZKsync Era, Abstract, and Starknet

ZKsync Era and Abstract (built on the ZK Stack) compile Solidity into a register-based virtual machine (EraVM) tailored for fast proving and native account abstraction—powering consumer-friendly passkey wallets.

Starknet went further still, setting aside the EVM in favor of Cairo, a language and VM engineered specifically for STARK proofs. While developers write in Cairo, they gain massive proving throughput and quantum-resistant hash cryptography.

4. The zkVM Revolution: How OP Succinct Turned Mantle into a ZK Rollup

Most recently, general-purpose RISC-V zkVMs (like Succinct’s SP1) made it possible to prove standard Rust execution clients without hand-crafting circuits. Mantle used OP Succinct in late 2025 and full Ethereum blob data in April 2026 to transform an OP Stack chain into a full ZK rollup.

Related districts in the city

Related glossary terms

This essay is an explainer written to help you read the city; it is not investment advice. Facts on this page are as of 2026-10 and may change. If you spot a mistake, please tell us through the contact page.