Co-Founder of Polygon: “ZkEVM is Web3’s Holy Grail.”

On Wednesday, July 20, Polygon, “the leading Web3 infrastructure used by some of the biggest organizations in the world, including Meta, Stripe, & Reddit,” announced the introduction of Polygon zkEVM. With the help of cutting-edge cryptography known as zero-knowledge proofs, Polygon zkEVM bills itself as “the first Ethereum-equivalent scaling solution that integrates easily with all current smart contracts, developer tools, and wallets.” Some of the largest companies in the world, such as Meta, use Polygon.

The $MATIC Polygon: What Exactly Is It?

A decentralized Ethereum scaling platform called Polygon “allows developers to create scalable, user-friendly dApps with low transaction costs without ever compromising security,” according to the company. The Polygon Foundation created Polygon. In the Polygon Lightpaper, Polygon is referred to as “a protocol and a framework for constructing connected Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks.”

On May 18, 2021, Anthony Sassano, an independent Ethereum lecturer, investor, and advisor, appeared on Twitter to clear up several misconceptions about Polygon (e.g. some people refer to Polygon as a sidechain to Ethereum, while others call it an L2 blockchain). The following are a few standout tweets from that Twitter thread:

There is the Polygon PoS chain and the Matic Plasma Chain. The PoS chain is where the vast majority of activity is taking place.
Because the PoS chain has its own permissionless validator set (100+ who are staking MATIC) and does not employ Ethereum’s security (also known as Ethereum’s PoW), it is referred to as a “sidechain” to Ethereum.
The PoS chain, which some may refer to as a “commit-chain,” goes beyond a typical sidechain and actually depends on and commits to Ethereum. It is dependent on Ethereum since a smart contract on that platform houses all of the validator/staking logic for the PoS chain.
This implies that the Polygon PoS chain would likewise go offline if the Ethereum network did. Second, the Proof-of-Stake chain periodically commits or checks itself to Ethereum.
This has two advantages: it gives the PoS chain Ethereum-based finality and it can aid in the chain’s recovery in the event of a catastrophic event. Additionally, this means that Polygon is paying Ethereum (in ETH) to use its blockspace as well as to secure the contracts and do checkpointing.

Sassano also used this opportunity to talk about the two bridges that link Ethereum and Polygon, which are as follows:

There are two bridges: the Plasma bridge, which Ethereum secures, and the PoS bridge, which the PoS chain validator set secures and operates.
Naturally, with the PoS bridge, two thirds of the validators may conceivably conspire and attempt to steal the bridge funds, but this is hazardous given the $3.4 billion at stake. The only defense in the event of an attack might be checkpointing and social cooperation.

He also shared his views on the application of multiple signatures to Polygons contracts:

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According to several current projects (notably those under DeFi), “the multi-sigs exist to allow the contract to be upgraded in event of a bug/exploit.”
The objective is to significantly improve this in the coming future. However, Polygon’s multi-sigs are 5 of 8, which is obviously not ideal and not decentralized.

He concluded by saying that this is the subject that he is “particularly enthused about” and that the company is “dedicated to designing and deploying L2 solutions like rollups in the future.”

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