On March 27, 2023, Polygon zkEVM officially entered the Mainnet Beta version. Join the list of large companies with Layer zkEVM such as zkSync, Linea, Starknet, etc. Let us learn about the development history of Polygon zkEVM and the power that supports it - Polygon Labs!
What is Polygon zkEVM?
Polygon zkEVM is a zk Rollup Layer solution developed using zkEVM technology. It is developed by Polygon Labs, a unit that specializes in developing extension solutions for Ethereum. The most famous product is Polygon PoS.
On March 27, 2023, Polygon zkEVM officially launched the Mainnet Beta version, allowing users and developers in the market to freely use and build products on this Layer 2.
This means that the community can experience Polygon zkEVM's interface, but may still experience network delays or errors due to incomplete functionality.
How Polygon zkEVM works
To understand the working mechanism of Polygon zkEVM, users first need to briefly understand the concept of Rollups.
Rollups are utility tools designed to improve Ethereum’s scalability. Rollup allows a large number of transactions to be aggregated into a block and then sent to Ethereum simultaneously.
In other words, each Rollup block sent to Ethereum will be a digest of many transactions within it.
Likewise, ZK Rollups are Rollups that use zero-knowledge to prove that transactions wrapped in blocks and sent to Ethereum are correct and valid.
Ethereum's first-layer smart contracts then only need to verify that proof without re-executing the entire transaction. This saves even more money on gas because proving verification is much cheaper than re-doing calculations.
where zkEVM is the programming language for EVM-compatible ZK Rollup solutions. zkEVM is divided into 4 different categories based on compatibility with EVM, with categories 1 to 4 having reduced compatibility.
Polygon zkEVM is zkEVM type 2, which means it is fully EVM compatible (EVM equivalent) and has a similar structure but with minor modifications internally to facilitate development. In this category, some apps may not be compatible.
Note: Polygon zkEVM is a scaling solution for Ethereum, so this second layer has nothing to do with Polygon PoS, another product developed by Polygon Labs that is a sidechain for Ethereum.
Ahead of the mainnet beta, Polygon zkEVM has achieved some memorable milestones, including:
There are over 84,000 wallet addresses on the network
More than 5,000 smart contracts launched
More than 75,000 ZK proofs generated
After two rounds of audits by two auditing companies
Structure of Polygon zkEVM
The process of Polygon zkEVM processing user transactions and generating transaction correctness proofs will mainly involve the following components:
Consensus contract (PolygonZkEVM.sol, deployed on L1 Ethereum)
Sorter
aggregator
Note: There will also be components such as RPC, zkProver, zkEVM bridge, synchronizer, etc. However, in order to simplify the amount of information available to the reader, this article will focus on the main functions of the above three components.
The main functions of these components will be briefly described in the following order:
The sorter takes transactions from the user's L2, sorts them and processes them in batches.
The sequencer sends this batch of transactions to the consensus contract (on L1) to be stored as a chain.
The aggregator now verifies the validity of the submitted batch of transactions and then generates a proof of their correctness (the ZK proof mentioned above).
The consensus contract on L1 verifies these ZK proofs again, and if successful, the submitted L2 data will be added to the Ethereum block.
Highlights of Polygon zkEVM:
1. Promote the application of zkEVM Type 2 technology
Adopting zkEVM (a Zk-Rollup solution that is fully compatible with EVM) will provide programmers with a better product development experience. Polygon zkEVM will also be more composable due to its similar emulation of Ethereum structures (Type 2 has better EVM compatibility than Type 3.4).
Based on this, Ethereum-based DApps can be easily migrated to the zk-Rollup chain without much modification of the source code or spending time and energy to rebuild the product, and can focus on innovation and create development models for their products.
However, so far, Polygon zkEVM only stays at Type 3, and implementing Type 2 is still a journey for the team.
2. Developed by Polygon Labs
Polygon Labs is also a long-standing company in cryptocurrency, having developed famous products such as Polygon PoS, Polygon Miden, Polygon Supernets and the Polygon zkEVM product we are talking about (renamed from Polygon Hermez).
In the past, the company acquired Mir for US$400 million (December 2021) and Hermez Network for US$250 million (August 2021), and then renamed Polygon Hermez to Polygon zkEVM to focus on developing zkEVM products.
Polygon zkEVM’s sister chain, Polygon PoS, had a time when the total amount of assets locked (TVL) in the DeFi ecosystem in this chain reached $9 billion and integrated many large projects such as Aave, Balancer, Curve, Uniswap, etc. ..Currently, the chain’s TVL ranks 5th in the entire market.
What is the token of Polygon zkEVM?
Currently (March 2023), Polygon zkEVM has not announced its own token, but will use Ether in the network for transaction fees.
However, the team also mentioned that MATIC (the native token of Polygon POS) will be used in Polygon zkEVM for staking currency and governance in the future.
The development route and updates about Polygon zkEVM are as follows:
August 2021: Polygon acquires Layer 2 Hermez for $250 million and renames it Polygon Hermez.
October 2022: Polygon announces Plonky2 - technology designed to solve the SNARK and STARK problems.
December 2022: Polygon begins auditing the zkEVM product and launches a final test network before upgrading Polygon zkEVM.
February 2023: Launch of the first block of the test network and announcement of the Mainnet Beta schedule.
March 2023: Audit test network version and officially enter Mainnet Beta.
Polygon zkEVM project team
Polygon zkEVM is a product in the Polygon Labs ecosystem, whose team includes:
Jaynti Kanani (co-founder): Blockchain engineer and developer of Web3, Plasma, and WalletConnect. Worked as a data scientist at Housing.com.
Sandeep Nailwal (co-founder): Programmer, former CEO of Scopeweaver, CTO of Welspun Group.
Anurag Arjun (Co-Founder): Formerly AVP (Product Management), IRIS Business. Worked at SNL Financial, Dexter Consultancy and Cognizant Technologies.
Mihailo Bjelic (co-founder): Technical developer of Ethereum.
Together with other co-founders, they have built products in the Polygon ecosystem such as Polygon ID, Polygon Hermez, Polygon Zero, and Polygon Miden.
Investors and PartnersPolygon zkEVM
Polygon Labs has raised funding since 2018 and received investment from Coinbase Ventures, one of the major investment funds in the market. At that time, in addition to Coinbase Ventures, Polygon also received investment from Binance Labs, Block Capital, Validation Capital, ZBS Capital, and MiH Ventures.
In its most recent funding round, in February 2022, Polygon raised $450 million in a fund led by Sequoia Capital India. Includes participation from SoftBank Vision Fund II, a group of 40 well-known venture capital firms in the market such as Tiger Global, Elevation Capital, Accel Partners and Steadview Capital.
Partner
So far, after more than four years of operation, Polygon has achieved a lot of success, especially becoming a partner of more than 100 large and small projects, such as Elrond, Chainlink, The Graph, etc. Become a blockchain and NFT service provider to provide services to unicorn companies outside the media market, such as Meta, Disney, E&Y, Mastercard, etc.
Similar projects
Some projects that use zkEVM Rollup technology similar to Polygon zkEVM can be mentioned, such as: Linea, zkSync Era, Starkware, Scroll, Taiko...
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