Launch of Polygon’s zkEVM Weeks Away

The launch of Polygon’s zkEVM main net will be on March 27. According to Polygon, it will be the first 'fully EVM equivalent' zero-knowledge rollup to reach Etereum main net. The zkEVM will be an essential tool to onboard large numbers of users and provide the privacy that is so vital to the future of blockchain adoption.

Let's start with some background. Since Ethereum is secure BUT expensive and slow, many projects besides Polygon have been working for years on building 'rollups'. So-called zero-knowledge (zk) rollups generate proofs that a batch of transactions is valid, without sharing details about the transactions. By relaying these to the Ethereum Network as a single, bulk transaction, it saves up space on the Ethereum base chain AND it is good for privacy. Also, it is much cheaper: the gas fee for the bulky batch of transactions is higher than an ordinary transaction but can be shared by a large number of participants.

What Are Zero-Knowledge Proofs?

Zero-knowledge proofs are, broadly speaking, a way of proving to someone that you have certain data without revealing the data themselves. We could use some of that in our online lives! Frankly, the current state of online authentication is a mess. Every year, millions of passwords and other user data are stolen from company databases.

But basic privacy is also sorely lacking in the broad crypto space. Pseudonymous transaction data are visible on-chain. If you send me some ETH, you can see the amount of ETH I hold! Of course, there are exceptions, such as a privacy coin like Zcash, which makes use of zk-technology. Another example of a project that implements zk-tech