Sidechain Polygon has unveiled its zkEVM technology, “the announcement of the year 2022,” it says. Combining the ZK Rollups process with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility, this new feature promises to shake things up in the ecosystem. Developers will be able to take advantage of the benefits of this new network while enjoying the blockchain’s native security.
Polygon announces the release of zkEVM technology
Polygon (MATIC), the Ethereum blockchain (ETH)-centric scalability platform, has unveiled zkEVM technology, which combines the efficiency of ZK Rollups with the compatibility of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), at ETHCC.
Developers will be able to implement any smart contract built for Ethereum on Polygon zkEVM. Concretely, this will allow the various projects of the Ethereum ecosystem to benefit from the security of their native blockchain while enjoying the speed and drastically reduced costs of Polygon.
Note that Polygon has its own ZK Rollup technology, called Plonky2 and launched in January this year, which is also compatible with the Ethereum blockchain.
For Mihailo Bjelic, co-founder of Polygon, this is a huge step for Web 3.0:
“The Holy Grail of Web3 infrastructure should have three major properties: scalability, security and compatibility with Ethereum. Until now, it has not been possible in practice to offer all these properties at once. Polygon zkEVM is a revolutionary technology that finally achieves this, opening a new chapter of mass adoption.”
In the interest of transparency and continuous improvement, Polygon zkEVM’s source code is already available on github, and the testnet should be made public soon, according to the release.
More interesting than other layers 2?
According to Polygon, compared to other layer 2 solutions, its zkEVM technology is a prime option to host various decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and various enterprise applications such as payments.
The famous MetaMask wallet for example, as well as development tools such as Hardhat, will be compatible with zkEVM technology. Note that the zkEVM solution is not limited to the Ethereum blockchain: its EVM compatibility includes de facto compatibility with EVM-compatible networks.
Moreover, this new technology will, according to Polygon, reduce transaction fees by up to 90% compared to various layer 1 solutions, and this is expected to grow with the various improvements made over time on the network.
According to the Polygon zkEVM website, the mainnet of this new network is planned for early 2023.
MATIC, Polygon’s token, has not been directly impacted by the news. However, it has seen a 70% increase over the last 7 days, particularly following the announcement of its entry into Disney. Its price is currently $0.91.
