Polygon Labs, the principle developer agency behind the layer-2 blockchain Polygon, launched on Tuesday the newest model of its zero-knowledge proving system, “Plonky3” – designed to be extra versatile than the earlier mannequin.
A proving system is on the coronary heart of zero-knowledge rollups, and a vital element within the cryptographic safety of distributed networks with a number of layers. It’s the piece of expertise liable for creating proofs that summarize off-chain transactions, so the data can then be fed again to a base blockchain, comparable to Ethereum. The system ensures “{that a} transaction was accurately executed or {that a} blockchain’s state has been up to date correctly,” in accordance with a press launch.
Plonky3 is now accessible as open-source software program beneath the favored MIT and Apache licenses, Polygon Labs mentioned.
The corporate’s earlier proving system, Plonky2, was launched in 2022 as “a single proving system centered on lightning-fast recursion by optimizing for {hardware},” Polygon wrote within the press launch, whereas Plonky3 is an “open-source toolkit that empowers ZK builders to construct their very own” digital machines based mostly on ZK cryptography.
When Polygon launched Plonky2 in 2022, the undertaking’s builders claimed that it was 100 instances sooner than current alternate options on the time.
“Plonky2 partly had some efficiency points, and partly did not fairly have the generality that we would have liked,” mentioned Daniel Lubarov, a co-founder at Polygon, mentioned in an interview with CoinDesk. “We see it as extra a part of the long run path of Polygon expertise.”
Polygon and ZK cryptography
“The proving system is the underlying factor that sort of permits us to try this [proving] effectively and kind of inside a sensible stage of efficiency,” Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, added in an interview.
Polygon has absolutely embraced zero-knowledge expertise, seen as one of many hottest traits in blockchain. In 2021, Polygon acquired the Hermez and Mir groups, among the many most distinguished zero-knowledge cryptography groups on the time, and introduced their founders in-house. Farmer and Lubarov co-founded Mir collectively.
Since then, Polygon was one of many first groups to launch a zero-knowledge rollup in 2023, and acquired a third firm, Toposware, to continue building out its zero-knowledge expertise.
“Previously, we had Plonky2, and we additionally had a couple of different separate prover libraries, one by the Miden group and one by the Hermez group inside Polygon,” Lubarov instructed CoinDesk. “Our plan now could be to convey all of it collectively beneath one code base and one framework.”
Learn extra: Polygon Acquires Zero-Information Cryptography Agency Toposware