Polygon Pushes for PoS Conversion to zkEVM Validium L2

Polygon Labs engineering team has published a proposal to upgrade Polygon Proof-of-Stake (PoS) sidechain to ‘zkEVM Validium’, an Ethereum-secured Layer 2 network.

Markedly, the zkEVM Validium protocol is a first-of-its-kind decentralized L2 secured by zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. The upgrade is targeted towards keeping up with the future by aligning the current Polygon PoS with the vision of Polygon 2.0. If accepted and approved, the upgrade would be rolled out on the mainnet by Q1 2024.

3/ The chain would continue to be operated by the existing $MATIC-staked validators, who would then be running a first-of-its-kind, decentralized sequencer, and data availability network.

If the proposal is accepted, the upgrade could go live on mainnet by the end of Q1 2024.

— Polygon (Labs) (@0xPolygonLabs) June 20, 2023

Polygon Awaits Approval of Upgrade Proposal

Polygon 2.0 was introduced about a week ago as a vision for unlimited scalability and unified liquidity. Hence, this comes off as a significant milestone for the protocol seeing that Polygon PoS would evolve to become more secure, and also perform better. Specifically, Polygon 2.0 plans to utilize Polygon’s in-house zkEVM to enhance the sidechain’s security, and performance while also keeping fees low and maintaining scalability. 

Also, “If the proposal passes, Polygon PoS and its $2B in assets, millions of users, and thousands of apps would seamlessly migrate to this bleeding-edge technology,” Polygon tweeted.

In the Polygon blog post, it was also highlighted that “If accepted by the community, this upgrade will mark an incredible technical achievement — the first time that an existing chain (especially of this size and importance) adds ZK proofs to become an L2.”

Aligning Polygon PoS to Polygon 2.0 Vision

Noteworthy, this is not the same as the zkEVM which Polygon Labs launched on the mainnet a few months ago. At the same time, Polygon envisages that both the upgraded Polygon PoS and the already existing zkEVM would coexist successfully in the same ecosystem. Moving forward, the chain will still be operated by existing MATIC staking validators. 

While Polygon PoS has a strong ecosystem and is widely accepted by all, it is not secured by any ZK Proofs but by its validators, hence the need for an upgrade which is equivalent to unification with other ecosystems. Polygon PoS will enjoy interoperability with other chains in the broader crypto ecosystem. 

From its design, it will fit perfectly into the Polygon 2.0 vision without any alterations for users and developers.