Polygon's ‘holy grail’ Ethereum scaling zkEVM beta hits mainnet

Polygon has released its open-source zkEVM Ethereum (ETH) scaling exertion to the mainnet, promising reduced transaction costs and accrued throughput of astute declaration deployments.

Polygon’s zkEVM is simply a zero-knowledge rollup (ZK-rollups) scaling solution equivalent to the Ethereum Virtual Machine. ZK-rollups summation throughput connected Ethereum’s blockchain by batching computations and authorities retention to layer-2 platforms. The exertion allows thousands of transactions to beryllium batched off-chain, with a impervious containing a minimal data summary posted to the Ethereum mainnet.

Polygon’s zkEVM is simply a benignant of ZK-rollup that mimics the transaction execution situation of Ethereum’s mainnet. The open-source zkEVM is touted to let decentralized applications (DApps) to standard done transaction batching, unlocking higher performance.

Gas fees are besides acceptable to beryllium reduced for DApp users, which could thrust wider adoption, portion the usage of zero-knowledge proofs sees Polygon zkEVM inherit Ethereum’s web security. Lastly, equivalence with Ethereum means that developers tin simply transcript crossed existing astute contracts to Polygon’s zkEVM.

Related: Polygon, Immutable zkEVM to tackle ‘huge incumbents exploiting players’

Cointelegraph spoke to Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal up of the mainnet beta motorboat to unpack the value of the milestone, and the anticipated effect zkEVM volition person connected the wider Ethereum ecosystem.

— Sandeep Nailwal | sandeep. polygon (@sandeepnailwal) March 25, 2023

Nailwal described ZK proofs arsenic ‘the beatified grail of Ethereum scaling,’ allowing the furniture 1 blockchain to simply verify a submitted impervious without having to re-run computations:

“Imagine you computed a full concern transaction determination other off-chain connected furniture 2, but connected Ethereum, you submitted a precise succinct impervious and Ethereum 200% knows that you computed it correctly.”

ZK-rollups are besides acceptable to marque optimistic rollups obsolete, according to Nailwal. The Ethereum blockchain fundamentally assumes optimistic rollups are submitting close computations portion a web subordinate verifies the details of the transaction. This is portion of the crushed optimistic rollups connected furniture 2 person a seven-day withdrawal period:

“That's wherefore it's a crippled changer. The assemblage knows that optimistic rollups are similar crutches earlier Ethereum figured retired ZK. And present that ZK is there, it benignant of makes optimistic rollups obsolete. This is the extremity crippled basically.”

Nailwal says the advent of ZK-rollups means that aboriginal improvement of the Ethereum ecosystem tin absorption connected idiosyncratic experience, accrued scalability and easier proving to ‘open up the floodgates’ for wider use.

While the zkEVM has been launched to mainnet beta, Nailwal stressed that the exertion is successful the extremity authorities of the product. The zkEVM volition proceed to beryllium optimized arsenic users summation and bug bounties, and further audits volition beryllium carried retired implicit the adjacent mates of months.

Cointelegraph besides queried whether ZK-rollups person brought the Ethereum ecosystem person to solving the alleged blockchain trilemma coined by co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

“It is precise close, actually. The blockchain trilemma says retired of security, decentralization and scalability, you tin take lone two. What you are doing is getting scalability determination else, computing thing and getting the information and decentralization from Ethereum.”

Buterin was besides progressive successful the motorboat of Polygon’s zkEVM connected March 27, carrying retired the archetypal idiosyncratic transaction. Nailwal described the motion arsenic symbolic, fixed Buterin’s ongoing power successful the improvement of Ethereum.