Polygon announced today the release of its zkEVM public testnet, which will let developers test the deployment of privacy-enhancing zk-rollups in their decentralized applications (dApps).
Zk-rollups are a much-hyped layer-2 scaling solution that promises to dramatically enhance the Ethereum blockchain’s performance by “rolling up” collections of transactions, which are then presented to the blockchain as a single block.
This cuts costs and speeds up transactions, as the blockchain only needs to deal a single transaction rather than many. It’s particularly useful on Ethereum as the blockchain can only process 15 transactions per second.
Leading DeFi platforms Aave and Uniswap have already jumped on board, as well as web3 social platform Lens and gaming studio Midnight Society.
Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic has encouraged developers to “try out the testnet, help us test its limits, break things and identify bugs, so we can all together deliver the first ever zkEVM to the world!”
An ‘Ethereum-equivalent’ scaling solution
Polygon stressed that zkEVM is “Ethereum-equivalent,” which means that all existing smart contracts, developer tools, and wallets already built on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains will work seamlessly.
This also means that developers don’t have to use new programming languages and tools or transpile existing code to migrate to zkEVM, according to Polygon.
The testnet release also includes an open-source zk-Prover with finality that resolves in minutes, which the company says is the first of its kind to be made available to the public.
David Schwartz, co-founder of Polygon Hermez says “Polygon zkEVM is the next step in Ethereum’s journey, and we are moving towards giving our users the full benefits of a working zkEVM — scalability without compromise.”
The announcement comes after Polygon spent $400 million in MATIC tokens to acquire zk-rollups startup Mir last December, after merging with another zk-rollups project, Hermez, in a $250 million deal last August.