Scaling Public Blockchains a Comprehensive Analysis of Optimistic and Zero Knowledge Rollups

Overview: Increasing the transactional throughput of public blockchains is the primary focus of blockchain research today. Achieving this without compromising security or decentralization is the holy grail and will be pivotal for many broader economic use cases on public blockchains. This thesis provides a structured overview of potential scaling solutions before thoroughly introducing and comparing zero-knowledge rollups and optimistic rollups. Both are promising layer 2 solutions that claim to scale public blockchains significantly in the near future. Furthermore, this thesis introduces fundamental concepts such as zero-knowledge proofs and examines potential attacks based on game-theoretic principles.