Polygon plans to deploy its zkEVM Mainnet Beta in late March.
The Ethereum scaling solutions company is getting ready to unveil its much-anticipated Ethereum Virtual Machine roll-up technology.
Polygon, an Ethereum layer-2 solution provider, has announced the long-awaited scaling upgrade, with the beta launch of its zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) mainnet scheduled for March 27.
Polygon stated in a blog post on February 14 that after three and a half months of “combat testing,” the system will be ready for the mainnet launch next month.
It’s been dubbed “seamless scaling for Ethereum,” and it was first made available as a testnet in December of last year.
The zk-rollup scaling technology has been under development for three years. During that time, the team recorded many milestones for the Polygon zkEVM system.
These include the deployment of over 5,000 smart contracts, the creation of over 75,000 zk-proofs, the creation of over 84,000 wallets, and the conduct of two public third-party audits.
The team stated that security is of the utmost importance, which is why “Polygon zkEVM has been run through a gauntlet of tests and audits.”
The system employs zero-knowledge proofs, which are cryptographic confirmations that allow platforms to validate large volumes of transaction data before bundling and confirming them on Ethereum.
Polygon isn’t the only group working on zkEVM. zkSync, a scaling provider, is creating similar EVM technology with its zkPorter, which moves critical transaction data off-chain.
Scroll, another scaling solution provider, is also developing a zkEVM solution in partnership with the Ethereum Foundation’s Privacy and Scaling Explorations group.
The Ethereum Foundation is also financing the Applied ZKP project, which attempts to create an EVM-compatible zk-rollup.
The significance of the technology was underlined by the researchers, who stated that genuine EVM-equivalence implies Ethereum may be scaled “without resorting to half-measures.”
“The best way to scale Ethereum is to preserve the existing Ethereum ecosystem: code, tooling, and infrastructure needs to just work. And that’s what Polygon zkEVM is aiming to achieve.”
Scaling technology also allows for large transaction cost savings. The team said that proof fees for a large batch of hundreds of transactions are around $0.06 and less than $0.001 for a single transfer.
Matter Labs, the company behind Polygon, raised $50 million in a Series B financing led by Andreessen Horowitz in November 2021 to develop EVM-compatible zk-Rollups.
MATIC, Polygon’s native token, has risen 5.3% in the last 12 hours in response to the announcement. As a result, according to Cointelegraph data, the cryptocurrency was trading for $1.24 at the time of writing.