Polygon unveils ZK-Rollups-based scaling solution for Ethereum

The Polygon project team announced a new layer-2 solution for Ethereum based on ZK-Rollups technology and released its central component—the virtual machine that uses the zk-STARKs protocol as the underlying proof system.

1/7 💫 We are proud to reveal the newest member of the Polygon family — Polygon Miden, an upcoming STARK-based, EVM-compatible Rollup!

The project is led by @bobbinth, former Facebook’s lead ZK researcher who led the development of Winterfell.

A 🧵 on why this is exciting… pic.twitter.com/5RqAJgnZlP

— Polygon | $MATIC — We’re hiring! (@0xPolygon) November 16, 2021

The solution is named Miden. It is an open-source project. Its development is led by Bobbin Threadbare — the creator of the cryptographic library Winterfell, used in Novi by Facebook.

Polygon regards ZK-Rollups as a “very promising” technology, which has a significant drawback — it struggles to support arbitrary logic and transactions, including operations EVM.

This addresses the problem: the Miden Virtual Machine (Miden VM) — a virtual machine that uses the zk-STARK zero-knowledge proof protocol. The latter is a faster and cheaper realization of zk-SNARKs, which are used in cryptocurrencies such as ZCash.

Miden VM not only supports arbitrary logic and transactions, but also automatically generates for any running program a “proof of execution” based on STARK. It can be used to verify a program’s correctness without the need to re-execute it.

“ZK is a prospect for Ethereum, and Miden VM is one of the most important elements of Polygon’s roadmap for scaling Ethereum. We believe the technology will make a significant contribution to the development of the infrastructure of the two blockchains, thereby accelerating mass adoption,” said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

According to the project’s second co-founder Mihailo Bijelic, Miden is “in active development”. The Polygon team has posted a prototype of Miden VM in the GitHub repository, intended for developers who want to contribute. In the coming months, they plan to significantly extend the VM’s functionality.

Miden has already drawn the attention of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. Bijelic thanked him for the support throughout the development.

Thanks for all the support throughout all this time @VitalikButerin, it has been critically important! 🙏https://t.co/hjLcm70U9W pic.twitter.com/RZNkDxzJ9R

— Mihailo Bjelic (@MihailoBjelic) November 17, 2021

“This is amazing. Very glad that Polygon takes ZK-STARKs full trustlessness seriously [ZK-STARKs do not require trusted setup]. I look forward to seeing a highly scalable future for Ethereum, with rollups as the driver,” wrote Buterin.

In August 2021, Polygon acquired the Hermez Network, a platform specializing in ZK-Rollups scaling solutions.

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