Polygon Enters ZKPs - Plonky2

Plonky2 is Polygon’s scalability solution on ZKPs. While Zero-Knowledge Proofs will be a standard after the Bitcoin standard, Polygon wants to become ZKPs era Ethereum.

TL;DR

ZKPs is one of the most secure solutions on cryptocurrency’s technology. Plonky2 can achieve the security goal while scaling up to help Polygon expand more users.

Here is a 1 min summary of the article if you want to skip the reading.

Recently Hacking Incident

Polygon just lost $1.6M due to a bug that hacks exploited and they deployed the patch immediately. Such critical updates can prevent further losses. However, it is also critical to invent a new way in blockchain to prevent hacking incidents.  

What Is Plonky2

Plonky2 is one of the solutions to prevent hacking. It is a recursive SNARK. SNARK is a Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge that processes certain information without revealing that information. I wrote an article to explain the details here and here.

How Plonky2 Secure The Network

Recursion is a key to providing additional security to the network. In contrast to Proof of Work, recursion is working parallel and one for each transaction while a single proof can verify all proofs. 

How Plonky2 Increases Efficiency

The hardwire technology helps to scale up arithmetic on modern CPUs. With custom gates and with many more wires, designers can write circuits optimized for efficient recursion.  

Proof Sizes

By eliminating the tradeoff, Polyky2 can improve its optimization through limited proof sizes. To achieve such proof sizes, a single proof that can be verified in a small circuit is a way to approach it.

Compatibility

Plonky2 will mainly run on Ethereum as Polygon is a layer 2 solution for Ethereum. The goal is to help Ethereum to improve its security while scaling up with speed and reducing the gas fee.

In Conclusion

It seems Polygon has found a way to break the trilemma Ethereum has faced. We will see how such technology can drive the future.