On many fronts developers are working to increase the scalability of Ethereum: both in terms of the number of transactions and lower transaction costs. This week, Polygon announced the launch of their so-called zero-knowledge (zk) Ethereum Virtual Machine. It is the first the zk-rollup technology compatible with Ethereum.

Until now, no party had managed to create so-called zero-knowledge rollups. By the way, the actual launch of the zkEVM is not expected until 2023.

To understand what this "zk-machine" is, we must first understand what rollups are. Rollups bundle hundreds of transactions on a second layer (Layer 2). To eventually be settled on the - in this case Ethereum - main chain, all that needs to be presented is a proof of validity of the transaction data - and not all the transaction data themselves. The latter is, in fact, what takes up a lot of space on the blockchain and thus makes blockspace expensive.

What are zero-knowledge proofs?

What are zero-knowledge proofs? It concerns a form of cryptography where parties can prove to each other that information is valid without revealing the information itself. Unlike other cryptographic techniques that encrypt and transfer all data, zero-knowledge proofs do this with scattered, non-revealing pieces of the information. For example, zk-proofs would allow you to prove that you are the owner of a passport without having to show the passport. The technology prevents malicious parties from intercepting private data.

Matching VISA's number of transactions per second

The main promises of Polygon zkEVM are a significant reduction in current Ethereum network costs - about 90%, according to the team's estimate. In addition, a dramatic increase in throughput is promised. The goal is to increase the number of transactions to the level VISA currently achieves: about 1,700 per second. While achieving this, the technology would still rest on the security and decentralization of the Ethereum blockchain.

About Polygon

Polygon (formerly Matic Network) has been around since 2017 and was the first well-structured platform to build scalable applications on Ethereum. Developers can quickly "click together" their own Ethereum-compatible blockchain or app with Polygon. Since the beginning of 2021, the network has been growing fast. Both in terms of number of users and price of the Matic token.