Polygon, a scaling project, has released a highly anticipated zero-knowledge-based rollup network, with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin set to perform the first symbolic transaction in a 10:30 a.m. EDT YouTube broadcast.
The Polygon zkEVM network has been in development for a year and provides a scalability solution for Ethereum apps, with ZK-rollups performing off-chain computations on a secondary layer to enable faster and cheaper transactions while still keeping Ethereum’s security as a priority.
The network is EVM-equivalent, which means it will support the same code as Ethereum and will allow developers to continue using their existing tooling and infrastructure. According to the development team, the mainnet is permissionless, and anyone can bridge assets and use them in zkEVM native apps.
“With zkEVM, you will be able to deploy any Ethereum application without any modifications, using existing Ethereum developer tools such as Remix, and interact with the network using standard wallets such as Metamask,” Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic explained in an interview. “Nearly 6,000 smart contracts were deployed on the testnet without a single modification and without incident.”
A ZK-rollup is a Layer 2 scaling solution for blockchain networks like Ethereum that aims to increase transaction throughput while decreasing transaction fees. It works by combining a large number of off-chain transactions into a single batch that is then submitted to the main chain as a single transaction. Most ZK-rollups lack natively supported Ethereum applications, but this is changing with the public release of a few zkEVMs.
Polygon’s zkEVM launch has attracted more than 50 projects from the crypto, web3, and gaming spaces, including dApps like Lens and Aavegotchi, DeFi projects like 0xvix and Quickswap, and Etherscan, Phantom, Midnight Society, Luganodes, Celer, Gameswift, and Yeeha Games. In addition to these projects, the Uniswap decentralized exchange and the Aave lending protocol have submitted governance proposals to join the Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta.
Polygon Labs, the network’s developer, subjected the zkEVM to two independent audits and one internal audit over a nearly four-month period to ensure its security. However, because the network is still in beta, the team has advised users to exercise caution in terms of security.
To share their code and encourage collaboration with the developer community, the team has made all aspects of the zkEVM open-source under an AGPL v3 license.
Several blockchain projects, including Polygon, Starknet, ZkSync, and Scroll, have been competing over the last year to develop a functional ZK-based Layer 2 solution capable of natively supporting Ethereum apps. So far, only ZkSync’s Era and Polygon chains have completed the mainnet release of their ZK-rollup networks.
