Polygon Bullish On The Future Of ZK As Its Proof-of-Efficiency Protocol Proves To Be A Game-Changer ⋆ ZyCrypto

Key Takeaways

• Proof-of-Efficiency (PoE) as it names the protocol will leverage on zk-Rollups.
• Zero-knowledge proof is poised to bring massive scalability to Ethereum compatible L2s.

The team behind the Polygon blockchain has game-changing plans around scalability. One of these is centered around Zero-Knowledge rollups (zkRollups). The Ethereum sidechain has announced the development of a new consensus mechanism that will be the cutting edge of zero-knowledge proof implementation.

Polygon introduces proof-of-efficiency (PoE)

In a recent blogpost, the Polygon team has revealed that its new consensus mechanism is the Proof-of-Efficiency (PoE) Protocol. The consensus mechanism has become necessary to meet the need for a way for blockchains to agree without sacrificing performance and security.

To achieve this, the protocol essentially splits activities between two permissionless roles: Sequencers and Aggregators. Sequencers collect transactions for rollup. The collected transactions are selected and preprocessed in layer 2, before being sent to layer 1 to be recorded. 

Aggregators on the other hand participate in the PoE consensus protocol, giving the first aggregator the right to create the validity proof of a new state of the L2.

Polygon highlights that PoE will offer several key properties. These include:

“Permissionless access to production of transaction batches on the rollup…Efficiency as key to network performance…Avoiding control by any single party…Protection from malicious attacks,”

It adds that total validation effort proportional to the value in the network will also be possible with PoE.

However, the protocol is still just a concept and is being developed by the Polygon Hermez team that is in charge of the blockchain’s implementation of zero-knowledge. The team says the concept will keep evolving even as it continues to explore other options.

The announcement is part of Polygon’s series of research and development efforts at scaling to meet the needs of billions of users. Nightfall, Polygon Miden, and Polygon Zero are some of Polygon’s other zk-Rollup research efforts.

Zero-knowledge proof and scalability on Ethereum

Zero-knowledge-proof technology has been around for a while on the Ethereum blockchain. zk-Rollup is a smart contract that batches hundreds of transactions off-chain and bundles them into a single transaction on-chain. This reduces the storage requirements of the blockchain by storing only the proof, thereby enabling faster and cheaper transactions.

Today, the first EVM-compatible zk-Rollup protocol, zkSync’s zkEVM, went live on public testnet on the Ethereum blockchain.