The Polygon team unveils ZkEVM, a technology that will reduce transaction costs and greatly increase throughput on a layer-2 rollup which inherits the security of Ethereum.
The zkEVM — a zero-knowledge proof-based rollup which achieves equivalence with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) is a product of the labor of Hermez, Zero and Miden teams. The Polygon team defines it as EVM specification-level compatibility.
Developers can easily deploy applications written in Solidity — Ethereum’s smart contract language — and take advantage of the ecosystem’s robust developer tools, just as they do on the Ethereum mainnet.
During the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris on Wednesday heralds the imminent launch of a zkEVM testnet, a goal set by the Hermez team at the same conference a year ago.
Jordi Baylina, technical lead at Polygon Hermez has told the group’s #PolygonTuesdays weekly Twitter space that it's been a long journey and in terms of personal terms describe the product as 'the project of my life'.
Rollups based on zero-knowledge proofs have several advantages over the optimistic rollups which are already up and running, such as Optimism and Arbitrum, the two largest by total value locked.
Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal said during the Twitter space that it makes Ethereum almost technically or theoretically infinitely scalable,adding that in contrast to other solutions, only Ethereum itself is needed. “It has network effects. It has developers. It has users, so you know we can take Web3 to the next stage of growth.”
Zero-knowledge rollups combine many layer-2 transactions into one which settle on Ethereum as a validity proof. While computationally intensive, zero-knowledge rollups are much faster and more scalable.
Scroll and Matter Lab’s zkSync are other projects working on EVM-compatible or EVM-equivalent zero-knowledge rollups. Polygon has a significant funding edge thanks to its $450 million raise in February.
Using an off-chain data availability solution, such as Polygon Avail, might result in potentially significant efficiency benefits even if zkEVM is "a real old-school rollup," according to Bjelic.
In contrast to today's monolithic Ethereum, where execution, data availability, and settlement all take place on the same layer, Avail is a brand-new blockchain that focuses on data availability and fits into a scaling architecture known as "modular."
According to Avail head Anurag Arjun, keeping Ethereum call data accounts for between 70% and 85% of the total cost.
He responded, "That component can transfer to Avail."
If this were to happen, zkEVM would become a validium.
According to Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic, a restricted testnet of the company's zkEVM should be accessible in two weeks, with a public permissionless testnet following a few weeks later. By year's end, the product is anticipated to be available on the Ethereum mainnet. Significant Web3 applications like Uniswap intend to launch on zkEVM.