Touted by Polygon as the “Holy Grail of Web3โณ infrastructure and said to be “the future of Ethereum scaling”, the new Polygon zkEVM Layer 2 network has finally launched. This is its first fully Ethereum-enabled solution that uses Zero-Knowledge Rollups technology. It should allow a drastic reduction in gas costs compared to the main network and increase throughput.
Polygon is a layer 2 platform that allows Ethereum-based applications to solve problems such as slow transaction processing and high fees, while taking advantage of Ethereum’s security. In addition, the protocol has enabled it to solve its scalability problems.
In fact, the project has been known for a year already. It was first presented by Mihailo Bjelic, co-founder and CEO of Polygon, at the EthCC in Paris in July 2021.
At that time, the team in charge of developing it assured that it would be designed to “work effortlessly with all smart contracts”. The developers are very enthusiastic and consider that we are facing a real revolution. It is true that initially industry specialists thought that such technology would not arrive for years.
Mihailo Bjelic says:
“The Holy Grail of Web3 infrastructure should have three major properties: scalability, security and Ethereum compatibility. Until now, it has not been possible in practice to offer all these properties at once. The key promises of Polygon zkEVM include a significant reduction in the current costs of the Ethereum Layer 1 network – around 90%, by the team’s estimate – as well as a dramatic increase in throughput capacity, while inheriting the security of the Ethereum blockchain.”
Polygon zkEVM, the Ethereum compatible layer 2
The announcement is shared in a twitter thread on the official Polygon Matic account as well as in a press release. Some details are revealed.
Polygon zkEVM has multiple advantages. Indeed, it is fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) environment. Thanks to this, it is now possible to integrate all native Ethereum decentralised applications (DApps), without exception. In other words, any smart contract that can be used on Ethereum will be used on Polygon zkEVM. But that’s not all, because all Ethereum tools (MetaMask) will also be compatible.
At the same time, throughput will be higher than at present and charges will be reduced.
“It’s like using Ethereum, but with the revolutionary power of ZK technology.”
Polygon promises to release new documentation about it very soon to clarify the details. In the meantime, it is only possible to view its basic architecture to get an “idea of how it works”.
