A look at zkEVM adoption

Polygon zkEVM mainnet was launched on March 28 this year, almost 19 months after Polygon’s acquisition of Hermez, a zk-rollup that was rebranded soon after. The efforts of Polygon zkEVM are aimed at leveraging Ethereum’s security for Polygon, something which the Polygon proof-of-stake (PoS) chain has yet to accomplish fully. Until Polygon zkEVM was released, all of Polygon’s assets were custodied by a multi-sig controlled bridge contract, and Polygon’s consensus was derived solely from MATIC stakers. Simply put, Polygon was more of an Ethereum sidechain than a rollup. However, with Polygon zkEVM’s development, Polygon has taken a significant step towards becoming a rollup.

Currently, however, Polygon zkEVM transactions are being sequenced and verified by a single entity, which is Polygon Labs, which poses very high centralization risks. This is expected for most protocols in the early stages of their launch, but what matters here is that Polygon zkEVM is able to submit validity proofs to verify batches of transactions on Ethereum. The transaction batches and validity proofs are currently managed by a single smart contract.