Deploy a ZK Stack Validium with Avail DA

Introduction

In this guide, we will deploy a ZK Stack validium powered by Avail DA for secure, cost-efficient, and verifiable data availability. By following along, at the end of this guide, you will have a version of a ZK Stack chain running on your machine on localhost.

Learn more about the ZK Stack

In this guide, you will go over the following:

Setting up your developer environment
Installing & running the ZK Stack

Setting up your developer environment

Ensure you have installed the following prerequisites.

Software	Version
Node.js	Latest LTS Version
Git	OS Default
Docker	Latest
Docker Compose	Latest
Yarn	v1.22.19
cargo-nextest	Latest
sqlx-cli	Latest
Foundry	Latest
Postgres	Latest

After executing the following commands you will have installed all the prerequisites needed and also have cloned the zksync-era repository.

Installation commands are based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS:

The below installation commands are taken from setup-dev.md from the zksync-era repository. For any more troubleshooting, please refer to the original repository.


# For VMs only! They don't have SSH keys, so we override SSH with HTTPS
git config --global url."https://github.com/".insteadOf git@github.com:
git config --global url."https://".insteadOf git://
 
# Rust
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
 
# NVM
curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.5/install.sh | bash
 
# All necessary stuff
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential pkg-config cmake clang lldb lld libssl-dev libpq-dev apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common
 
# Install docker
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
sudo add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu focal stable"
sudo apt install docker-ce
sudo usermod -aG docker ${USER}
 
# Start docker.
sudo systemctl start docker
 
## You might need to re-connect (due to usermod change).
 
# Node & yarn
nvm install 20
# Important: there will be a note in the output to load
# new paths in your local session, either run it or reload the terminal.
npm install -g yarn
yarn set version 1.22.19
 
# For running unit tests
cargo install cargo-nextest
# SQL tools
cargo install sqlx-cli --version 0.8.1
 
# Foundry ZKsync
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/matter-labs/foundry-zksync/main/install-foundry-zksync | bash
foundryup-zksync
 
# Non CUDA (GPU) setup, can be skipped if the machine has a CUDA installed for provers
# Don't do that if you intend to run provers on your machine. Check the prover docs for a setup instead.
echo "export ZKSYNC_USE_CUDA_STUBS=true" >> ~/.bashrc
# You will need to reload your `*rc` file here

Installing & running the ZK Stack

1. Install ZK Stack CLI

ZK Stack CLI is a toolkit that facilitates the creation and management of ZK Stacks. To install zkstack, run the following command:


curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/matter-labs/zksync-era/main/zkstack_cli/zkstackup/install | bash
source ~/.bashrc
zkstackup

2. Clone the zksync-era repository from github


git clone git@github.com:matter-labs/zksync-era.git
cd zksync-era

Install submodules:


git submodule update --init --recursive

3. Running the containers

We can start running the containers and ecosystem by first cleaning the docker containers and then running the following command:


zkstack dev clean all

Now, we are ready to start the DB and Reth containers using zkstack. The great thing about this is that zkstack handles everything on its own. If you encounter any errors, just make sure your ports are not busy and the observability feature is disabled during container setting up.


zkstack containers

4. Initialize Elastic Chain ecosystem

We need to create an Elastic Chain ecosystem now. We will choose all the default options.


zkstack ecosystem init

Once we have successfully initialized an elastic chain ecosystem, we can create new chains and can choose to create a Validium when prompted. For simplicity, we will choose the default options.


zkstack chain create

Once we have created the chain, we have to finally initialize it and deploy the contracts of the ZK chain:


zkstack chain init

5. Configure Avail DA

BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Before configuring Avail DA, complete these essential steps:

Create an Avail Account: Set up your account to interact with the Avail network
Get Testnet Tokens: Obtain AVAIL tokens on the Turing testnet for transactions
Create an AppID: Required to identify your application on the Avail network

After completing these prerequisites, configure your chain to use Avail as the data availability layer by updating two configuration files with the appropriate settings.

Please choose between the Full Client or Gas Relay configuration below.

Full Client

Using the full client requires you to create an AppID and maintain the Avail balance in your designated data submission account.

Add the following to your chain’s general config: zksync-era/chains/$CHAIN_NAME/configs/general.yaml


da_client:
  avail:
    bridge_api_url: https://turing-bridge-api.avail.so
    timeout_ms: 7200000
    full_client:
      api_node_url: wss://turing-rpc.avail.so/ws
      app_id: YOUR_APP_ID

Add the following to your chain’s secrets config: zksync-era/chains/$CHAIN_NAME/configs/secrets.yaml


da:
  avail:
    seed_phrase: YOUR_SEED_PHRASE

Gas Relay

The gas relay API is in private beta. Using the gas relay allows you to post data to Avail using a relayer and pay fees in a different token (only if supported) without needing to maintain a balance. It is recommended to create an AppID to use within the gas relay service. Please contact the Avail team if you want access to the gas relay API.

Add the following to your chain’s general config: zksync-era/chains/$CHAIN_NAME/configs/general.yaml


da_client:
  avail:
    bridge_api_url: https://turing-bridge-api.avail.so
    timeout_ms: 7200000
    gas_relay:
      gas_relay_api_url: https://https://staging.turbo-api.availproject.org
      max_retries: 3

Add the following to your chain’s secrets config: zksync-era/chains/$CHAIN_NAME/configs/secrets.yaml


da:
  avail:
    gas_relay_api_key: YOUR_API_KEY

6. Run ZK chain

Start the server which will be running the ZK chain. By default, it will be running on localhost:3150.


zkstack server --chain $CHAIN_NAME

Your ZK chain is now running and you can start using it. For any troubleshooting or issues, please refer to the original repository which you can find here .