zkSync Era is a layer 2 rollup that uses zero-knowledge proofs to scale Ethereum without compromising on security or decentralization. Since it's EVM compatible (Solidity/Vyper), 99% of Ethereum projects can redeploy without refactoring or re-auditing a single line of code. zkSync Era also uses an LLVM-based compiler that will eventually let developers write smart contracts in C++, Rust and other popular languages.
To keep the zero-knowledge circuits as simple as possible and enable simple extensions, we created the system contracts. These are privileged special-purpose contracts that instantiate some recurring actions on the protocol level. Some of the most commonly used contracts:
ContractDeployer This contract is used to deploy new smart contracts. Its job is to make sure that the bytecode for
each deployed contract is known. This contract also defines the derivation address. Whenever a contract is deployed, a
ContractDeployed event is emitted.
L1Messenger This contract is used to send messages from zkSync to Ethereum. For each message sent, the L1MessageSent
event is emitted.
NonceHolder This contract stores account nonces. The account nonces are stored in a single place for efficiency (the
tx nonce and the deployment nonce are stored in a single place) and also for the ease of the operator.
Bootloader For greater extensibility and to lower the overhead, some parts of the protocol (e.g. account abstraction
rules) were moved to an ephemeral contract called a bootloader.
We call it ephemeral because it is not physically deployed and cannot be called, but it has a formal address that is used on msg.sender, when it calls other contracts.
This repository is used as a submodule of the zksync-era.
Compile the solidity and yul contracts: yarn sc build
Check the system contracts hashes: yarn sc calculate-hashes:check
Update the system contracts hashes: yarn sc calculate-hashes:fix
The tests of the system contracts utilize the zkSync test node. In order to run the tests, execute the following commands in the root of the repository:
yarn test-node
It will run the test node, and you can see its logs in the output. Then run tests in the separate terminal:
yarn test
Please note that you need to rerun the test node every time you are running the tests because, in the current version, tests will be affected by the state after the previous run.
During the tests, we deploy most of the system contracts on special "testing" addresses, which are equal to production addresses + 0x1000.
This approach enhances test flexibility since we can manipulate contract states without impacting the system's functionality. We can freely modify contract states, mock them, etc., without being constrained by the contracts used by the test node. Additionally, these addresses are located in the kernel space, as required by the system contracts.
For this purpose special testing preprocessing mode exists, it's needed to change the address constants. When some system contracts call others using these constants, they will actually get to testing addresses.
The exceptions are:
During preprocessing, we keep production addresses for them because we want other contracts to call them in tests rather than mock them. This simplifies the testing process. Also, when testing these contracts, some of them should also be deployed on the original addresses:
- EventWriter.yul: should be on the original address because event logs are filtered by address
- Ecrecover.yul: uses precompile call instruction, which is address-dependent
- Keccak256.yul: uses precompile call instruction, which is address-dependent
- SHA256.yul: uses precompile call instruction, which is address-dependent
However, this is not the case for EcAdd.yul and EcMul.yul, so they can be deployed on any addresses, even outside kernel space.
The behavior of the contracts can depend on various factors: system call flag, extra ABI registers, msg.sender, msg.value(context_u128 value), context, etc.
It is crucial to control these values during testing.
They are often interconnected, requiring the need to mock some of them.
To achieve this, the following contracts and features were used/implemented:
- MockContract.sol - a contract used for mocking.
- ExtraAbiCaller.zasm - a contract that allows to set the extra abi registers,
context_u128value with the system flag for the call. - SystemCaller.sol - a "proxy" that sets the system call flag.
In theory
ExtraAbiCallercan be used instead, but this one is sometimes more convenient because it can be called with the destination contract ABI. hardhat_stopImpersonatingAccount- this API method is useful during the tests themselves. Apart from that, it's used to force deploy the contracts on the specific addresses during the tests. See ContractDeployer.sol:forceDeployOnAddress.
Only the main and most generic aspects are mentioned above, however, there are more features that can be found in the tests. There are wrappers/helpers for these contracts and features, along with additional functionality in shared, and test-contracts.
Currently, during specific contract testing, we aim to cover all external functions. Typically, one test case corresponds to one main function call, possibly with additional calls to prepare the state.
Therefore, considering all the information above, we can say that it's almost unit tests over external functions. Many examples can be found in test.
System contracts handle core functionalities and play a critical role in maintaining the integrity of our protocol. To ensure the highest level of security and reliability, these system contracts undergo an audit before any release.
Here is an overview of the release process of the system contracts which is aimed to preserve agility and clarity on the order of the upgrades:
The main branch contains the latest code that is ready to be deployed into production. It reflects the most stable and
audited version of the protocol.
The dev branch is for active development & the latest code changes. Whenever a new PR with system contract changes is
created it should be based on the dev branch.
Whenever a new release is planned, a new branch named release-vX-<name> should be created off the dev branch, where
X represents the release version, and <name> is a short descriptive name for the release. The PR with the new
release should point to either the main branch or to the release branch with a lower version (in case the previous
branch has not been merged into main for some reason).
Once the audit for the release branch is complete and all the fixes from the audit are applied, we need to merge the new
changes into the dev branch. Once the release is final and merged into the main branch, the main branch should be
merged back into the dev branch to keep it up-to-date.
Since scripts, READMEs, etc., are code that is not subject to audits, these are to be merged directly into the main
branch. The rest of the release branches as well as the dev branch should merge main to synchronize with these
changes.
The zkSync Era system-contracts are distributed under the terms of the MIT license.
See LICENSE-MIT for details.
zkSync Era has been through lots of testing and audits. Although it is live, it is still in alpha state and will go through more audits and bug bounties programs. We would love to hear our community's thoughts and suggestions about it! It is important to state that forking it now can potentially lead to missing important security updates, critical features, and performance improvements.