Polygon, one of the leading Layer 2 scaling solutions for Ethereum, is gearing up for a major upgrade to its network. On March 27th, the Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta will be launched, bringing with it four key features that are expected to benefit the community greatly.
Polygon Labs is preparing for the end-game of Ethereum scaling.
— Polygon (※,※) (@0xPolygon) March 6, 2023
Since we’re closing in on the launch of Polygon zkEVM’s Mainnet Beta, we wanted to break down what this next-gen system will unlock for the community, FEATURE BY FEATURE👇🏽
The first of these features is EVM-Equivalence, which is expected to provide frictionless scaling for Ethereum.
This means that all of Ethereum’s tooling will be supported, and developers will be able to copy and paste their Solidity code without having to worry about any compatibility issues. Polygon zkEVM is designed to be cheaper and faster than Ethereum, making it an attractive option for developers looking to build decentralized applications.
It’s worth noting that EVM-equivalence is not the same as EVM-compatibility, which is an important distinction to make.
EVM-compatible Rollups use an LLVM to target an intermediate representation of the EVM compiler. While this approach can improve performance, it can also introduce more surface area for bugs, and codes cannot be re-audited. Polygon believes that EVM-equivalence is the true frictionless scaling solution.
The second distinguishing element of Polygon zkEVM is its speed. While engineering trade-offs will be necessary to maintain performance, the time required to generate a proof of Concept zkEVM for a batch of 10M gas is less than 2 minutes.
Bridge security is the third critical feature. Because of their reliance on trustworthy intermediates, bridges have been a primary target for attackers. Yet, ZK proofs are intended to bring in a new type of bridge that is more safe and dependable.
Lastly, Polygon zkEVM is intended to make Ethereum transactions quicker and cheaper. The proving time is now less than 2 minutes, and the cost has been significantly lowered. On Polygon zkEVM, the cost of proving a single Uniswap transaction is $0.0019, and the cost to an individual user sending one ERC-20 token is $0.0001.
