MATIC rose 12% in a week. Can Polygon, which has completed its technical upgrade, continue the upward trend?
ZK technology has been strengthened, with costs reduced by more than 30 times over 25 years: How is Polygon doing this year?Author: DeMan
The recent asset price trends of Polygon have greatly excited its investors.
Since January 23, the price of the Polygon token MATIC has risen from $0.71 to $0.997 on February 20. At the same time, its 24-hour trading volume has seen a significant increase, reaching $616,451,842, a growth of 25.30%. Over the past 7 days, the price of MATIC has surged by 12.30%, showing strong momentum.
On February 9, Polygon released the Type 1 Prover of its next-generation zkEVM prover, which is Polygon's next-generation proof technology capable of generating proofs for any EVM chain (sidechains, Optimistic Rollups, and even Ethereum itself). Polygon stated that the Type 1 upgrade will be able to generate ZK proofs for Ethereum mainnet blocks, with an average cost per transaction as low as $0.002-$0.003 (over 36 times faster than any other Type 1 Prover). With improvements in Plonky3 and zkEVM, costs are expected to decrease by 30 to 50 times next year.
So, what exactly is the Type 1 Prover? What optimization potential does Polygon's zkEVM technology have? What does this mean for the L2 track? The following will elaborate on these points.
How does Type 1 Prover work with ZK technology? How does the Etrog upgrade enhance zkEVM capabilities?
Polygon's key position in the Ethereum L2 track relies on zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology. The Type 1 Prover represents a significant innovation in Polygon's zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology, with the following principles and impacts:
- Optimization of proof generation: The Type 1 Prover can generate ZK proofs for any chain based on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), including sidechains, Optimistic Rollups, and even Ethereum itself. This capability is based on complex mathematical and cryptographic principles, verifying transactions through the generation of zero-knowledge proofs without revealing all transaction data, thereby ensuring transaction privacy and security.
Significant improvements in cost and speed: The introduction of the Type 1 Prover has significantly reduced the cost of generating ZK proofs, with the average cost per transaction expected to drop to $0.002 to $0.003, while also increasing the speed of proof generation, making it over 36 times faster than any other Type 1 Prover.
Future cost reduction expectations: With further technological improvements, Polygon expects costs to decrease by an additional 30 to 50 times in the future, which will bring broader application possibilities and lower operational costs to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Additionally, it is worth noting that around the same time, Polygon leveraged the Etrog upgrade to make key technical modifications to the zkEVM mainnet Beta version, mainly including the following aspects:
Expansion of precompiled support: The Etrog upgrade significantly enhances the functionality of Polygon zkEVM by introducing four additional precompiles, making it almost a complete Type 2 ZK-EVM. The addition of these precompiles provides developers with more tools and resources, enabling them to build and deploy decentralized applications (dApps) more efficiently.
New transaction processing methods: The upgrade also includes a new transaction processing mechanism that optimizes the verification and execution process of transactions, thereby improving the overall performance and efficiency of the network.
Compatibility and seamless migration: Most notably, the Etrog upgrade allows dApp developers to redeploy their code and smart contracts on Ethereum without any audits or modifications, greatly reducing migration costs and simplifying the development process.
In summary, the introduction of the Etrog upgrade and Type 1 Prover not only enhances the performance and compatibility of Polygon zkEVM but also provides new solutions for the scaling and optimization of the Ethereum ecosystem.
The Polygon ecosystem project Keom is launching a series of DeFi innovations, bringing financial imagination to ZK technology
While Polygon is undertaking technological upgrades, its DeFi projects within the ecosystem are also leveraging ZK technology to achieve Web3 financial innovations, which greatly benefits the development of the Polygon ecosystem.
In the DeFi field, the Polygon ecosystem project Keom is leading a theoretical and practical revolution through its pioneering work on the Polygon Miden platform. By utilizing zero-knowledge proof (ZK) technology, Keom not only redefines the infrastructure of decentralized finance on a technical level but also sets new standards for transaction privacy and security.
Keom's core innovation lies in its reimagining of on-chain order books, based on ZK technology. By implementing this concept on Polygon Miden, Keom demonstrates how to achieve efficient execution of decentralized trading without sacrificing user privacy and security. The theoretical basis for this approach is that ZK proofs allow verifiers to confirm the correctness of a computation without knowing the specific details of its execution.
Polygon Miden provides a unique execution environment that combines the advantages of Ethereum's account model with the UTXO (unspent transaction output) models of Bitcoin and Zcash, and introduces ZK proofs to enhance privacy and security. Within this framework, accounts communicate through notes, which are messages carrying assets that define how to consume these assets. This structure enables developers to execute transactions locally and verify them through ZK proofs, ensuring transaction privacy and security without revealing all transaction data.
Keom utilizes this unique execution environment of Miden to address the specific challenges of placing decentralized order book exchanges on-chain. The theoretical significance of this solution lies in its ability to execute all functionalities—such as order matching, order creation, bid-ask spread, and market depth visualization—without actually holding liquidity. In other words, the decentralized order book will serve as a service organizing the execution of all these functions, while liquidity is shared by any account wishing to exchange assets on the same blockchain.
Under Miden's notes framework, each note acts like its own independent contract. The theoretical advantage of this design is that, although there may be exploitable vulnerabilities in the consumption conditions of notes, the differences between different notes and the selective transparency of note consumption conditions mean that attackers need to exploit notes individually rather than launching bulk attacks on users' funds. This brings a fundamental transformation to user security in DeFi.
Continuous significant actions since the beginning of the year: Can Polygon exceed investor expectations in 2024?
Recently, Polygon has made significant progress in promoting blockchain technology innovation. On January 28, Polygon announced that it would soon upgrade to Type 2 ZK-EVM, a transformation that will greatly simplify the process for developers to deploy code on Polygon zkEVM, achieving a seamless experience similar to that of the Ethereum mainnet. Additionally, Polygon has launched the Cardona testnet, providing developers with a new testing environment.
On February 13, Polygon further announced that the AggLayer v1 mainnet would soon go live. AggLayer aims to connect different blockchain networks using zero-knowledge proof technology, marking an important step for Polygon in blockchain interoperability and scalability.
Moreover, Polygon's strategic partnership with the Bitcoin Layer 2 network B² Network, through the "B² Hub + Polygon CDK" technology stack, aims to help developers build secure and powerful Bitcoin Rollups, further enhancing interoperability between Rollups.
These developments showcase Polygon's ambitions within the L2 technology ecosystem, but the effectiveness of these efforts will still need to be validated through concrete practices.
