- Polygon’s (MATIC) Plonky3 is now production-ready.
- The new proving system toolkit promises to unlock significantly greater innovation in the ZK space.
- Succinct Labs’ SP1 prover puts the innovative potential of the toolkit on full display.
As blockchain adoption grows, networks like Ethereum have faced a need to scale, leading to advancements in several cryptographic fields. Among the teams moving the needle in Ethereum scalability is Polygon (MATIC) Labs, developers of the eponymous Ethereum scaling network.
In recent years, the team has backed the zero-knowledge approach to scaling, pushing the boundaries on what is possible with technology that promises to bring greater scalability while also advancing security and privacy.
In the latest instance, the firm has disclosed Plonky3’s production readiness, an advancement to its ZK proving system. Plonky3 promises to unlock novel ZK virtual machine use cases and experiences by offering developers unprecedented flexibility.
Polygon’s (MATIC) Plonky3 is “Less Opinionated”
Polygon (MATIC) Labs has taken another step to accelerate the proliferation of ZK solutions. On Tuesday, July 16, the team revealed that Plonky3 was now production-ready and available for use under MIT/Apache open-source licenses.
Plonky3 is meant to be an improvement to Polygon’s (MATIC) widely adopted Plonky2 proving system. Unlike Plonky2, however, Plonky3 is not marketed as a proving system but as a toolkit. This shift comes as Plonky3 goes beyond offering an efficient proving system to offering a set of tools that developers can use to curate their own proving system experiences for unique use cases, leading Polygon (MATIC) Labs to describe it as “less opinionated.”
For the uninitiated, proving systems are central to the operations of ZK-rollups. This is because these rollups rely on cryptographic proofs (provable mathematical summary of an operation), which are generated through proving systems to validate transactions without revealing the details. The design of these systems can influence things like speed and cost.
While this design was fixed in Plonky2, Polygon (MATIC) Labs disclosed that with Plonky3 developers will have a wide array of features to choose from to optimize for either speed or cost, depending on their desired use case. With this greater flexibility, Polygon intends to drive greater innovation in the ZK space, a potential that is put on full display with Succinct Labs’ SP1 zkVM solution.
Polygon (MATIC) Plonky3 Already Making Waves
While Polygon (MATIC) Labs only recently announced Plonky3’s production readiness, the proving system is already being used by several projects, including Succinct Labs, one of the toolkit’s contributors. Succinct Labs leveraged Plonky3 to build its SP1 zkVM, which allows developers to generate proofs for different consensus mechanisms.
SP1’s capabilities make it a natural asset to the AggLayer, an interoperability solution that Polygon (MATIC) Labs is developing in partnership with several leading teams in the industry to support as many virtual machines as possible. With the zkVM, non-ZK chains can plug into the AggLayer to share liquidity with other chains and settle transactions with Ethereum, bolstering Polygon’s multichain ecosystem goals.
At the same time, Polygon (MATIC) Labs is leveraging the SP1 to secure the AggLayer by generating consensus proofs of connected chains, which are checked for validity before transactions are processed across the unified bridge.
On the Flipside
- It remains to be seen whether Plonky3 will be as widely adopted as Plonky2.
Why This Matters
Several projects have shied away from the ZK approach despite its security and privacy potential due to its perceived complexity. Polygon’s Plonky3 is yet another developer toolkit that promises to change this narrative.
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