Ethereum scaling solution Polygon announced the launch of zkEVM Public Testnet, which allows developers to test their decentralized apps using the zk-rollups technology.
Zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) is a much-hyped layer-2 scaling solution that can significantly enhance Ethereum’s speed by rolling up a collection of transactions into a single block.
This process cuts costs and increases throughput for Ethereum, which can only process 12 transactions per second. Polygon’s new launch comes as a full-featured open-source implementation of zkEVM that promises cross-compatibility and built-in developer tools.
Popular DeFi protocols Aave and Uniswap have already expressed interest in joining the program. Along with them, web3 networking platform Lens and gaming studio Midnight Society have jumped on board.
“Polygon zkEVM is now the first zkEVM to reach a major milestone: We are entering our testnet with a complete, open-source ZK proving system. That means we can demonstrate that we’re generating ZK proofs within our EVM-equivalent environment, using our own purpose-built proving system,” wrote Polygon in a blog post.
The company also encouraged developers to try out the testnet and identify bugs and improvements to help push ZK innovations to their limits.
Since Polygon’s zkEVM is “Ethereum-equivalent,” developers can simply move the existing smart contracts and the tools to the new tech. According to Polygon, the process won’t require the use of a new programming language or additional tools.
Polygon has been testing out zk-rollups since the last year. It acquired zk-rollups startup Mir in December for around $400 million in MATIC tokens and signed a $250 million deal in August with another zk-rollups project Hermez.
