• Polygon announces its zkEVM public testnet and asks its community to try it and share their feedback.
• The Polygon team has been working for years to optimize the ZK technology to boost the potential of Ethereum.

On October 10, the Ethereum scaling network, Polygon, announced the public testnet launch of its zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine). The launch is part of the vision of evolving the Polygon project as it aligns with its vision and goals. Polygon announced the zkEVM in July to scale Ethereum using ZK proofs within an environment similar to the EVM.

Polygon believes this zkEVM is an essential move to achieving a smooth scaling solution the community has long desired. This public testnet release achieves this goal. Thus, Polygon becomes the first zkEVM to reach a public testnet using an open-source ZK proving system. Polygon also announced that there are top EVM-based DeFi platforms ready to deploy on this zkEVM.

Notable ones include Lens (a Web3 social platform), Aave, Uniswap and Midnight Society (a gaming studio) would also deploy, while many others will join soon. With this testnet, Polygon zkEVM is the first zkEVM to achieve a significant milestone of entering a testnet with a whole open-source ZK proving system. That means it uses its purpose-built proving system to generate ZK-proofs within its EVM-equivalent environment.

Battle-testing the Polygon zkEVM and looking ahead

The Polygon zkEVM will give Polygon users the full benefits of an effective zkEVM. One such benefit is that developers and applications can get all scaling and security benefits without learning a new coding language. Also, the Polygon zkEVM provides better capital efficiency and allows projects to develop decentralized applications (DApps) on Ethereum quickly and with low fees.

However, the Polygon team admits that it needs to battle-test this Polygon zkEVM testnet before it can deliver its full benefits. Hence, it is inviting the community to battle-test the Polygon zkEVM testnet. Polygon wants to provide the Ethereum community with all it loves about Ethereum but through ZK proofs which provide improved scalability.

However, this would only be possible by enhancing Polygon zkEVM’s equivalence level with Ethereum. The Polygon zkEVM is a ‘type 3’ protocol category according to Vitalik’s framework. Hence, it is not yet EVM-equivalent and would require some modifications to achieve this equivalence.

For Polygon zkEVM to become an Ethereum EVM equivalent, it has to be categorized as a ‘type 2’ protocol based on Vitalik’s framework. This testnet will aid its goal of making the Polygon zkEVM achieve type 2 compatibility. According to the announcement, Polygon’s team has been working for many years to optimize the ZK technology and enable the endless potential of Ethereum.

Polygon claims that its zkEVM is the future of Ethereum. Polygon co-founder, Mihailo Bjelic, also urged the community to try out the testnet so that the developers can improve it. Bjelic adds that the joint efforts of the community and developers would help the protocol deliver the first-ever zkEVM.