Polygon zkEVM
Polygon zkEVM is the leading ZK scaling solution that is equivalent to Ethereum Virtual Machine: The vast majority of existing smart contracts, developer tools and wallets work seamlessly.
Polygon zkEVM harnesses the power of ZK proofs to reduce transaction cost and increase throughput, all while inheriting the security of Ethereum L1.
Polygon zkEVM is the next chapter of Ethereum scaling
For Ethereum developers, Polygon zkEVMallows them to seamlessly deploy their Ethereum Smart Contracts while retaining the inherent security of Ethereum with fast finality and low costs.
As Polygon zkEVM launches on mainnet beta, a roadmap toward EVM equivalence type 2 category zkEVM rollup, TPS performance and cost reduction starts the next stage of optimizations.
What is Zero Knowledge?
Zero knowledge proofs are used to prove the validity of a statement without revealing the statement. This is used to communicate state transitions in context of blockchains and zkEVM solutions.
What is a rollup?
Zero-knowledge rollups (ZK-rollups) are layer 2 scaling solutions that increase throughput on Ethereum Mainnet by moving computation and state-storage to Layer2. ZK-rollups can process thousands of transactions in a batch and then only post some minimal summary data to Ethereum Mainnet.
What is zkEVM rollup?
zkEVMs are a type of ZK rollup that is designed to mimic the same transaction execution environment as mainnet Ethereum. Implementation of zkEVMs differ in their proving algorithms, as well as data availability strategy.
zkEVMs also differ in their level of EVM-equivalence. There are four main levels of EVM-equivalence.
The PoE Smart Contract
The PoE smart contract, therefore, makes two basic calls: A call to receive batches from Sequencers, and another call to Aggregators, requesting batches to be validated
Sequencer
A Sequencer receives L2 transactions from the users, preprocesses them as a new L2 batch, and then proposes the batch to the PoE smart contract(in L1) as a valid L2 transaction.
Aggregator
An Aggregator receives all the transaction information from the Sequencer and sends it to the Prover (or zkProver) which provides a byte-sized zk-Proof after complex polynomial computations. The Smart Contract validates this proof. This way, an Aggregator collects the data, sends it to the Prover, receives its output and finally, sends the information to the smart contract to verify that the Validity Proof from the Prover is correct.
zkProver
- zkEVM employs advanced zero-knowledge technology to create validity proofs. It uses a zero-knowledge prover (zkProver), which is intended to run on any server and is being engineered to be compatible with most consumer hardware. Every Aggregator will use this zkProver to validate batches and provide Validity Proofs.
- Proving and verification of transactions in Polygon zkEVM are all handled by a zero-knowledge prover component called the zkProver. All the rules for a transaction to be valid are implemented and enforced in the zkProver.
- The zkProver performs complex mathematical computations in the form of polynomials and assembly language which are later verified on a smart contract. Those rules could be seen as constraints that a transaction must follow in order to be able to modify the state tree or the exit tree.
Benefits and features
Security: Leveraging zero-knowledge proofs, Polygon zkEVM inherits security from Ethereum
Scalability: Polygon zkEVM allows dApps to achieve scalability by batching many transactions together. This unlocks higher performance.
Costs: Polygon zkEVM brings down the cost for dApp users leading to mass adoption.
Equivalence: Benefit from the existing Ethereum dev tools and ecosystem. Simply copy-paste your existing smart contracts.