Polygon, one of the biggest layer-2 scaling platforms on the Ethereum blockchain in terms of TVL, recently released its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) beta to the public. This release happened on March 27, and it is widely expected to be one of 2023's biggest blockchain trends.
A cutting-edge technology that was built in public now belongs to the public. This is a gift to the Ethereum community, in recognition of everything Ethereum has given us.
— Polygon (labs) (@0xPolygonLabs) March 27, 2023
During the release, Polygon also announced that it is making all aspects of its zkEKM open-source so that developers are able to study and share the code and also allow them to contribute and improve the overall zero-knowledge space.
In an interview with CoinDesk Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said,
“We want to be extremely aligned to the Web3 ethos. We want more experimentation.”
As part of the ceremonial event alongside the announcement, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was granted the privilege of initiating the first transaction on the new zkEVM and this was live-streamed at the ETHGlobal. Nailwal took to Twitter to share this historic moment.
.@VitalikButerin did the symbolic first ever transaction on @0xPolygon #zkEVM and it has a message on it
— Sandeep Nailwal | sandeep. polygon 💜 (@sandeepnailwal) March 27, 2023
"Millions of constraints for man, unconstrained scalability for mankind"
Goose bumps!! https://t.co/HLNiVyRLie pic.twitter.com/Ue0C1CuDTd
The transaction sent by Buterin on Polygon's zkEVM was completed successfully where he sent 0.005 ETH to a random address with a message referencing Nei Armstrong's famous words upon walking on the moon,
"A few million constraints for man, unconstrained scalability for mankind."
Buterin himself has been a strong proponent for the development of scaling systems for Ethereum since 2020, and even noted in his blog post, the various version of zkEVMs in the market come with a bunch of trade-offs, which include poor compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine programming environment.
According to Polygon Labs' press release, over 50 companies shared their intent to build for the Ethereum network using the Polygon zkEVM technology.
This launch comes amid the race to launch the first zkEVMs in the market - when Polygon's competitor, Matter Labs opened its own zkEVM called zkSync Era to the public. zkSync was launched for developers last month and only recently launched it for general users late last week. The competition in the space has been getting intense as the release was rolled out immediately after Polygon's announcement that it was launching its own zkEVM for the public on March 27.
Polygon's Sandeep Nailwal also gave a warning to users regarding the zkEVM, saying that it is still a newer technology there could be some bugs and people should be wary.
“It's a new technology, so we are going to put ample warnings for the users that please be cautious on this, don't bring your life savings into it immediately,” Nailwal said.
Nailwal has been a strong proponent of zkEVM technology, even saying that he believes it to be the future of the Ethereum network. In an earlier interview with coinDesk, Nailwal had also said that it is exploring using zero-knowledge technology on its main Polygon PoS chain.
"In 18 to 24 months, you will see almost all of the large web3 applications being built on the zero-knowledge-proven layer 2 chains,” Nailwal said.
Thus it seems that zero-knowledge technology could be on the brink of bringing about a major change in the industry as we know it and Polygon is trying to stay at the bleeding edge of it.
