Polygon and the Ethereum Foundation recently conducted a series of developer-led discussions about Zero Knowledge and the value of source-available and auditable Zero Knowledge (ZK) proving systems.
Joining Polygon in the discussion was the Scroll team, including Ye Zhang, Scroll co-founder Haichen Shen, as well as Barry Whitehat and Edu from the Ethereum Foundation.
#Polygon and the Ethereum Foundation recently got together for a series of dev-led discussions about Zero Knowledge, the EVM, and what we learned stress-testing Polygon zkEVM.
— Polygon – MATIC 💜 (@0xPolygon) November 29, 2022
For an overview of the discussion series, click 👇https://t.co/9YllBOJSWi
Polygon notes that the accelerated progress of performant ZK proving systems demonstrates the field’s collaborative nature. Over the last 18 months, top-tier cryptographers and research mathematicians working on ZK tools have collaborated to achieve numerous successes along with some failures.
“With Ethereum’s ZK-powered future in sight, Polygon’s Hermez team is making available all they’ve learned launching the Polygon zkEVM.” read a blog titled “Polygon Presents: Lessons Learned in Zero Knowledge.”
In the first session of discussion, Polygon’s Jordi Baylina presented PIL + zkEVMs (state machines, zkASM, recursivity, and aggregation).
Later, Muoz-Tapia of Polygon demonstrates the design principles for Polygon zkEVM with a simplified example, a Fibonacci circuit in PIL. While Shen, on the other hand, renders the same circuit in Halo2.
The discussion took a high-level look at ZK prover system architecture, the inherent tradeoffs between different approaches, and the optimizations available when connecting the components of a Zero Knowledge proving system. Shen contributes relevant data on Scroll’s ZK Rollup, and the Polygon team discusses Ethereum’s MULMOD opcode.
In the final session, members of the Ethereum Foundation led a discussion about the importance of auditable source code when developing tools for a trustless platform. What metrics can we use to evaluate a ZK-proving system? Baylina offers Polygon’s testnet lessons, including common (and uncommon) bugs and frameworks for evaluating the soundness and stability of Polygon zkEVM.
Polygon (MATIC) was one of the cryptocurrency networks that partnered with the most important companies in 2022, including Starbucks, Disney, and Nubank. zkEVM is Polygon’s latest method for making Ethereum’s ecosystem faster and more efficient.
Zk-rollups are Ethereum layer 2 protocols that allow transactions to be processed separately from the main network, increasing speed and lowering costs.
