TS-Verkle: A TypeScript Native Verkle Library With On-chain Verifier

TL;DR

This paper introduces TS-verkle, a TypeScript-native Verkle tree library with an on-chain Solidity verifier, highlighting implementation challenges and empirical performance insights for blockchain scalability.

Contribution

It provides the first TypeScript implementation of Verkle trees with an on-chain verifier, and evaluates their practical performance compared to Merkle trees.

Findings

Verkle trees incur higher costs than Merkle trees without optimization.

The implementation demonstrates feasibility of on-chain verification of Verkle trees.

Empirical results challenge assumptions about Verkle trees' efficiency benefits.

Abstract

Blockchain systems face significant scalability challenges due to growing data volumes and increasing transaction demands, necessitating more efficient data structures and verification mechanisms. Verkle trees, a novel data structure combining the efficiency of Merkle trees with the compactness of vector commitments, have gained attention for their potential to optimize blockchain storage and improve scalability. However, their practical implementation, especially at the smart contract level, has remained unexplored. To address these challenges, we present TS-verkle, the first known TypeScript-native implementation of Verkle trees designed for web3 backend compatibility, coupled with a corresponding on-chain verifier written in Solidity. Our work bridges this gap by providing a concrete implementation of Verkle trees and demonstrating their feasibility for on-chain verification. While previous literature suggests Verkle trees should outperform Merkle trees due to their succinct proof size, our empirical evaluation reveals that basic implementations of Verkle trees actually incur higher costs than Merkle trees without advanced optimization techniques. This finding represents a crucial insight for blockchain developers and researchers considering Verkle tree adoption. The paper discusses implementation strategies and performance characteristics while exploring implications for scaling and data availability in decentralized blockchain systems.