“Seamless scalability for Ethereum” was deployed as a testnet in December last year.
Three years have gone into developing zk-rollup scaling technology. The team has reached various milestones with the Polygon zkEVM system.
These include 5,000 smart contracts, 75,000 zk-proofs, 84,000 wallets, and two public third-party audits.
Source: Polygon
The team stated that “Polygon zkEVM has been run through a gauntlet of tests and audits” since security is the top concern.
Zero-knowledge proofs—cryptographic confirmations—allow platforms to validate massive volumes of transaction data before bundling and confirming them on Ethereum.
Polygon is not the only zkEVM team. zkSync’s zkPorter off-chain EVM technology is comparable.
Scroll, another scaling solution provider, is working with the Ethereum Foundation’s Privacy and Scaling Explorations group on zkEVM.
Applied ZKP, another Ethereum Foundation project, is developing an EVM-compatible zk-rollup.
The team claimed that real EVM-equivalence allows Ethereum to scale “without resorting to half-measures.”
“The best way to scale Ethereum is to preserve the existing Ethereum ecosystem: code, tooling, and infrastructure needs to just work. And that’s what Polygon zkEVM is aiming to achieve.”
Scaling reduces transaction costs. The team reported proof costs of $0.06 for a huge batch of hundreds of transactions and $0.001 for a single transfer.
In November 2021, Andreessen Horowitz sponsored a $50 million Series B financing for Matter Labs, which makes Polygon, to produce EVM-compatible zk-Rollups.
