Last December, Mantle Network announced its strategic integration with Succinct. After three months of intensive development, we have launched a new upgrade based on OP Succinct on Mantle Network Sepolia Testnet. This article will explain the motivation, technical modifications, overall workflow, and significant advantages this upgrade brings to Mantle Network.

Background Motivation: Moving Towards More Efficient and Secure On-Chain Operations

Mantle Network has been committed to creating an efficient, secure, and low-cost on-chain environment for DeFi applications and institutional use cases. This integration with Succinct represents Mantle Network's important transformation from a traditional optimistic rollup to a zero-knowledge (ZK) validity rollup. Through OP Succinct technology, Mantle Network has not only achieved fast finality but also enhanced network security through introducing this cryptographically verifiable proving system.

Why Choose OP Succinct?

• High Compatibility With OP Stack

OP Succinct can seamlessly integrate with the latest OP Stack, providing great convenience for Mantle Network to deploy existing smart contracts and tools. With this high compatibility, developers can utilize new ZK technology to achieve more efficient execution logic without significant modifications to existing code.

• Improved Finality Speed

Transaction finality speed is crucial for Mantle Network's vision — becoming the liquidity chain of the future. Through the OP Succinct integration:

(1) Lower Capital Idle Costs: Fast finality reduces fund withdrawal time during finality, achieving final confirmation within 1 hour, a significant improvement compared to previous bridging time, representing a 168x improvement.

(2) Higher Market Responsiveness: Faster transaction state confirmation allows market participants to respond more quickly to changes. This performance improvement is particularly crucial for attracting traditional financial institutions to the blockchain ecosystem, as they have extremely high requirements for transaction efficiency and capital liquidity.

• Enhanced Network Security

With this testnet upgrade, Mantle Network is one step closer to transitioning from an Optimistic Layer 2 (L2) network without a Fraud Proof system into a system where every transaction becomes cryptographically verified using OP Succinct's zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology. This moves away from a reputation-based model for security and sole reliance upon trusting the Sequencer. This transformation builds a more stable security foundation for future application scenarios (such as DeFi, banking, trading etc.).

Mantle Network has also completed integration with EigenDA. This integration with OP Succinct will be the industry's first integration of two modular components working in harmony: EigenDA and OP Succinct. Mantle Network thus achieves Type-1 equivalent zkEVM, and under this architecture, also processes the EigenDA data during zkVM execution using KZG-based verification mechanisms. This ensures data immutability and builds a solid trust foundation for the entire system.

• Proof Generation and Cost Efficiency

In blockchain L2 solutions, ZK rollups are highly regarded for combining ZKP security with high throughput. However, traditional ZK rollup solutions face a significant issue: high proof generation costs. Generating ZKP consumes substantial computational resources, resulting in high fees and longer processing times, limiting its widespread application in high-transaction scenarios. The emergence of OP Succinct solves this pain point through innovative design (such as precompile/curve optimization and proof aggregation techniques), bringing low-cost proof generation and offering ease for implementation into the Mantle network.

Furthermore, since proof generation costs for L1 derivations are almost fixed, as transaction volume increases, user-shared costs decrease, bringing more cost-effectiveness to the Mantle network.

Mantle Network Modifications and Technical Adaptation

In this upgrade, Mantle Network has adapted and upgraded multiple core components to ensure seamless connection and efficient operation with the latest OP Succinct tech stack:

1. Compatibility Adaptation

The current OP Succinct has been adapted for the latest OP Stack, while Mantle Network's OP Stack version is modified based on Bedrock. Therefore, Mantle Network made compatibility adjustments, including adaptations for Mantle Network's unique designs — such as using MNT as the gas token. These adjustments ensure smooth integration of the network's existing custom functions with the new technology.

2. Introduction of Mantle Succinct Proposer

Mantle Network replaced the original OP Proposer with the new Mantle Succinct Proposer. This component is responsible for submitting ZK proofs of Mantle network state changes to Ethereum L1, ensuring correct finalization of Mantle Network's state on the mainnet.

3. Introduction of Kona and Alloy

• Kona: A Rust-implemented state transition function, becoming an essential solution in zkVM, TEE, and fraud proofs VM environments where reth operation faces difficulties.
• Alloy: As Rust crates interacting with OP Stack, Alloy provides underlying support for multiple modules of the OP Succinct tech stack, including data structures and necessary functions, making interactions between Rollup nodes, derivative pipelines, and block execution logic more efficient.

4. Connection with Succinct SP1 Prover Network

To achieve proof generation outsourcing, we completed integration with Succinct's SP1 Prover Network. This design delegates compute-intensive ZKP generation tasks to a professional network, enhancing Mantle Network's scalability and performance.

Overall Workflow Analysis

OP Succinct integration introduces new transaction processing and state finalization workflows. Here are the detailed system operation steps:

1. Users send transactions via RPC, and the Sequencer receives and orders transactions to ensure processing in predetermined order.
2. op-batcher submits transaction batches to EigenDA every 15 minutes, while completing commitment submission to L1.
3. Mantle-Succinct-proposer periodically submits ZK proofs of Mantle's completed state changes to the MantleSuccinctL2OutputOracle contract on Ethereum L1.
4. Mantle-Succinct-proposer calls Mantle Succinct Server to request generation of new range proofs or final aggregated proofs.

• For range proof requests, Mantle Succinct Server obtains EigenDA commitment by monitoring L1, extracts specified block interval data from EigenDA. Uses Kona for block derivation, caches all dependent data, then interacts with Succinct Prover Network to generate final range proof.
• For aggregated proof requests, proposer submits span proof together to zkVM to generate an aggregated groth16 proof.

5. Proof generation occurs within SP1 zkVM, using zkVM executable binary (compiled from Kona) and necessary parameters to generate ZKP. Mantle-Succinct-proposer records the proof_id, then guides server polling until obtaining final proof, which server returns to proposer.

Summary

Mantle Network's launch of OP Succinct integration on Sepolia testnet marks a crucial step in its technical evolution. By utilizing ZKP technology, Mantle Network has enhanced network security, scalability, and performance, making it an ideal platform for institutional applications and high-value assets. As Mantle Network continues to explore ZK validity rollup possibilities, this integration lays the foundation for a more secure and efficient blockchain ecosystem.

We look forward to developers and users experiencing these new features on Mantle Network Sepolia Testnet and jointly promoting the future development of blockchain technology.

*Mantle Network is referred to as a rollup in this article for clarity reasons. However, as Mantle Network utilizes EigenDA rather than 4844, it is more precisely a Validium.