Polygon Connects EVM Chains To Ethereum With “Insanely Efficient” Type 1 Prover Touted As Technological Feat By Vitalik Buterin

BySteven Walgenbach

Updated: 09 February 2024

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Polygon Labs released a “Type 1 prover,” which marks a technological feat that even Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin has touted as key to making auxiliary layer-2 networks nearly equivalent to the base blockchain.

“Polygon has again demonstrated that it leads the industry in the development of ZK technology by delivering a Type 1 zkEVM that is insanely efficient,” said Brendan Farmer, a co-founder of Polygon, in an email to CoinDesk.

Polygon Pushes Blockchain Technology Forward

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin previously wrote about the different types of provers. With regards to a Type 1 prover, the Ethereum co-founder said that it has the benefit of being perfectly compatible with Ethereum.

But a major disadvantage is that a lot of computational power is required to produce ZK-proofs that are compatible with the Ethereum network. He also noted that this process can take up to hours.

Polygon’s Type 1 prover forms part of the project’s 2.0 roadmap, which focuses on making its ecosystem more interconnected. With the introduction of this mechanism on Feb. 8, any network compatible with Ethereum’s EVM standard can become a layer-2 network powered by zero-knowledge proofs. It also gives these networks access to Polygon’s broader ecosystem.

Releasing the Type-1 upgrade to the zkEVM prover, the next generation of Polygon’s proving tech. It can generate proofs for any EVM chain—sidechain, optimistic rollup, even Ethereum itself.

When proving Ethereum mainnet blocks, avg per-transaction costs are $0.002 – $0.003.… pic.twitter.com/KDX8XIiwyh

— Polygon | Aggregated (@0xPolygon) February 8, 2024

The chains can then plug into Polygon’s new Aggregation layer, which provides access to “all of the liquidity and value on Ethereum itself, ” according to a Feb. 8 X post. Polygon also said the type 1 prover will be able to generate the ZK proofs that are compatible with Ethereum mainnet blocks.

Blockchain Transaction Costs Will Undergo A Dramatic Reduction

The average cost for a transaction through the Type 1 prover will be between $0.002-$0.003, according to the post. Polygon’s team believes that there will be a 30 to 50X reduction in transaction costs in the next year.

The Type 1 prover will be another configuration available to projects building with the Polygon Development Kit (CDK), which is the modular toolkit for spinning up ZK Layer-2 networks.