Key highlights:
- Despite being in beta, zkEVM has passed audits and has a $1 million bug bounty program.
- Polygon co-founders have referred to zero-knowledge proofs as the “holy grail of Ethereum scaling,” and believe that within 18 to 24 months, most major Web3 applications will be built on zero-knowledge-proven layer 2 blockchains.
- Over 50 projects, including Aave and Uniswap, have already deployed on Polygon’s zkEVM.
Layer 2 blockchain zkEVM, created by Polygon with zero-knowledge technology, is live on the mainnet. Co-founder Mihailo Bjelic said that zkEVM is still in beta and should be used with caution.
zkEVM uses cutting-edge zero-knowledge proofs to provide Ethereum compatibility with low transaction costs and complete privacy. This opens up a new world of possibilities for decentralized apps and enterprise adoption.
Zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine can aggregate more transactions in less mainnet block space. It does this by being able to complete transactions without exposing the information in the smart contract to the Ethereum mainnet. zkEVM is an equivalent of the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Battle of the Layer 2s
While there are many Ethereum L2 blockchains on the market, the three most used are Arbitrum, Polygon and Optimism. Each of them is trying to gain an advantage over the others by developing their own technologies. While Arbitrum is already one of the most used ones, it has recently increased its fame with the ARB token airdrop.
The highest market cap is at Polygon with $9.5 billion. Arbitrum follows with $1.46 billion, while Optimism has a market cap of $650 million. When it comes to TVL, Arbitrum has a higher TVL than its two competitors combined: $2.16b.
On the other hand, Matter Labs recently released a zk L2 called zkSync Era on the Ethereum mainnet. Most of the code for both zkSync and zkEVM is open source. Future distribution and modifications will also remain open source, but the code will not be used for private purposes. The dev team has open-sourced all aspects of zkEVM under an AGPL v3 license to encourage collaboration with the community.
zkEVM Passed Audits
Putting security first, Polygon has placed zkEVM under the supervision of blockchain cybersecurity companies Spearbit and Hexens. Audits will continue for the next four months, plus a $1M bug bounty program will be implemented. Still, zkEVM is a brand-new technology, so great care must be taken before bringing millions of dollars of assets into this network.
Polygon is offering a whopping $1 million bug bounty program for the zkEVM mainnet. By incentivizing the brightest minds to identify potential weak points in the system, Polygon is taking a proactive approach to ensuring the stability and longevity of its zkEVM mainnet. The bounty program will run for 3 months to allow plenty of time for attacks on the network.
Polygon’s co-founders Mihailo Bjelic and Sandeep Nailwal define ZK proofs as “the holy grail of Ethereum scaling”. Because L2 provides Ethereum with very concise proof of any transaction, convincing Ethereum of the correctness of that transaction. According to Nailwal, within 18 to 24 months, nearly all major Web3 applications will be built on zero-knowledge-proven layer 2 blockchains.
Buterin Made First Transaction: A Fun Message
Vitalik Buterin made the first transaction live on ETHGlobal as part of the Polygon zkEVM announcement ceremony. While sending 0.005 ETH to a random address, Buterin referred to Neil Armstrong’s famous first words walking on the moon: “A few million constraints for man, unconstrained scalability for man kind.”
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Buterin is known to openly support the development of Ethereum scaling systems. In his blog post in August 2022, he mentioned the types of zk-EVMs compatible with EVM.
More than 50 Projects Immediately After Launch Deployed on Polygon zkEVM
Smart contracts and dApps on Polygon’s PoS mainnet can also be published on zkEVM without any changes to their code. Already highly anticipated, this blockchain managed to attract more than 50 projects in its first day.
Some of the projects that include games, DeFi projects, DEXs, blockchain explorers, and other Web3 dApps include: Celer, Midnight Society, Etherscan, 0xvix, Lens, Aavegotchi, Quickswap, Phantom, Luganodes, Yeeha Games, Gameswift. Aave lending protocol and Uniswap DEX have also published governance proposals on whether to participate in the zkEVM Mainnet Beta.
