Why ZK-RaaS is Not a Silver Bullet for Scaling

ZK-RaaS doesn't solve the core cost of posting data. Rollups still rely on expensive Layer 1s like Ethereum for DA, consuming ~80% of total transaction cost.\n- Celestia & Avail offer cheaper external DA, but fragment security.\n- EigenDA provides restaked security, creating a new trust dependency.

Generating ZK proofs is computationally intensive, creating a centralized bottleneck. Fast finality requires expensive, specialized hardware.\n- RiscZero, Succinct offer proving services, but create centralization vectors.\n- Proving times scale with program complexity, not just transaction count.

Most ZK-RaaS deployments use a single, permissioned sequencer for simplicity. This creates a single point of failure and potential MEV extraction.\n- Shared sequencer networks like Astria and Espresso are nascent.\n- Decentralization adds latency, negating the 'instant finality' marketing.

Each ZK-Rollup is a sovereign chain. Native cross-rollup communication requires complex bridging, reintroducing security risks.\n- LayerZero, Axelar, Wormhole become critical but trusted intermediaries.\n- Intents-based solutions like UniswapX and Across add protocol complexity.

Capital fragments across hundreds of app-chains. Native yield and composability are lost. This stifles DeFi innovation on new chains.\n- Omnichain liquidity pools (LayerZero) are a patch, not a solution.\n- Protocols must deploy and bootstrap on each new rollup independently.

Users still manage gas tokens, sign transactions per chain, and track addresses. Account abstraction (ERC-4337) is not solved by ZK-RaaS.\n- Safe, Biconomy, ZeroDev are separate, complex integrations.\n- Paymasters and bundlers add new centralization and cost layers.

ZK-RaaS doesn't solve the data availability (DA) problem; it outsources it. Your chain's security and censorship resistance are now tied to your chosen DA layer (Ethereum, Celestia, Avail, EigenDA).\n- On Ethereum: High security, but ~$0.25-$1 per tx in blob costs.\n- On Alt-DA: ~90% cheaper blobs, but you inherit a new, less battle-trusted consensus layer.

Most ZK-RaaS providers run the sequencer. This creates a single point of failure and MEV capture. "Decentralize later" is the mantra, but the economic and technical hurdles are massive.\n- Current State: Providers like AltLayer, Gelato, Conduit control sequencing.\n- Builder Risk: Your chain's liveness and transaction ordering are not credibly neutral at launch.

A ZK-Rollup is not a general messaging bridge. Native cross-chain composability requires a separate, often fragile, bridging stack (e.g., LayerZero, Axelar, Wormhole).\n- Added Complexity: You now manage a rollup and a bridge, each with its own security assumptions.\n- Liquidity Fragmentation: Your chain's native assets are siloed without significant bridging liquidity incentives.

ZK-proof generation is computationally intensive. RaaS providers use optimized provers (e.g., Risc Zero, SP1), but costs are non-linear with transaction complexity.\n- Cost Structure: Proof costs scale with logic, not just tx count. A complex DeFi op can be 10-100x more expensive to prove.\n- Latency: Proof generation time (~2-10 seconds) is a hard lower bound on your chain's time-to-finality.

Using a RaaS provider's proprietary stack (e.g., OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, Polygon CDK) creates path dependency. Migrating off their platform is a hard fork.\n- Sovereign Alternative: Rollup frameworks like Rollkit offer more exit freedom but require in-house expertise.\n- Strategic Choice: Are you optimizing for speed-to-market or long-term technical sovereignty?

Shared sequencer networks (Espresso, Astria) promise decentralized sequencing and cross-rollup atomic composability. This is nascent tech with unproven security and latency at scale.\n- Current Reality: Not production-ready for most RaaS chains.\n- Future Promise: If successful, they could solve centralization and interop, but today it's a roadmap feature, not a guarantee.