Polygon Announces Polygon Bridge for its Zero-Knowledge Rollup

Polygon announced that Polygon Bridge is now available for Polygon zkEVM. The development comes a month after the launch of the zero-knowledge rollup on Mainnet Beta.

The symbolic first transaction on Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta was performed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta is designed to be an all-purpose Ethereum scaling protocol that allows developers means to build on it with the usage being similar to Ethereum, without modifying languages or tooling.

Polygon zkEVM

According to the official blog post, Polygon Bridge for zkEVM will feature several improvements that incorporate feedback received from the community and include a more visible progress bar, transaction history, and recent transaction panel with color-coded completion status, time estimates for pending transactions and the ability to filter.

‍Polygon Bridge for zkEVM is powered by zero-knowledge technology, meaning – they are governed entirely by smart contracts – one on Ethereum and one on Polygon zkEVM. Moreover, users will be able to withdraw funds from the Ethereum mainnet within 30-60 minutes. It will also support ERC-20 tokens and the extended features of ERC-777 tokens.

The launch of Polygon zkEVM eliminates the mapping requirement – a process that can take hours or even days. As such, the token being bridged will automatically be mapped once a user triggers the bridging transaction. This is being touted as a “major UX improvement” compared to other chains, which require users to map tokens before bridging.

“Permissionless, open source, and public – anyone can use it to transact and build. An impressive array of teams is already building on the Mainnet Beta, including premier dApps such as Lens and Balancer, blue-chip gaming projects such as Midnight Society and Oath of Peak, and trusted infrastructure providers such as ANKR, Alchemy, Sequence, and The Graph.”

Turning Point in Ethereum Scaling

Since its launch last month, Polygon’s zkEVM has attracted $5.4 million in TVL. Polygon’s zero-knowledge rollup also got a boost from Uniswap earlier this month as the proposal to authorize Polygon Labs to deploy the DEX protocol to zkEVM was passed with zero opposition.

Polygon zkEVM deposits also increased considerably. Quickswap, the leading DEX on the Polygon PoS Chain, and long-time Uniswap rival, Sushi are live on the network.

Zooming out, Polygon has shown significant growth this year in terms of developer count and attracting some major institutions. Despite this, the company behind the development of the layer 2 blockchain – Polygon Labs – announced slashing its workforce by 20% in February this year.