Polygon Labs Unveils Agg Layer to Drive ZK Transition in L2s
Egglayer strives to offer uniform security to connect modular and monolithic chains, including those within the Polygon ecosystem.
Polygon Labs has unveiled an interoperability protocol, Egglayer, to drive zero-knowledge (ZK) proof network transitions amongst Layer 2 (L2s). The first version of Egg Layer will go live on February 23 to enable developers to understand its tech stack and connect their respective blockchains.
The AggLayer, short for “Aggregation Layer”, aims for unified liquidity and interoperability for L2s. This is a crucial component of Polygon Labs’s second iteration, Polygon 2.0, which aims to drive the ZK network transition for enhanced efficiency and reduced costs.
Another crucial piece of Polygon 2.0 was introduced a week ago – Type 1 Prover. Type 1 Prover is a zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) that allows developers to create L2 auxiliary chains as powerful as the base network. Although other types of zkEVMs are available in the market. Coinspeaker report established that Polygon’s new Type 1 Prover could perform 50X better than its rivals.
Most Ethereum L2s, like Optimism and Arbitrum, are currently forced to balance security, speed, and costs. Most L2 projects have resorted to a seven-day withdrawal delay to achieve the delicate balance.
Some users opt for third-party bridges to avoid these inconveniences. Unfortunately, that also comes with security risks and higher costs for proving transactions. Speaking to The Block, Brendan Farmer, co-founder of Polygon, stated that ZK networks can fix the overburdening costs associated with Optimistic Roll-ups.
In this regard, Type 1 Prover will impact EVM chains with ZK scaling capacity and turn them into validiums. Validiums are specialized L2s that leverage the ZK scaling technique for better efficiency and cost reduction. Unlike Optimistic Rollups, which stores app data and ZK-proofs on the mainnet for verification, Validiums stores app data off-chain and only ZK-proofs on the Ethereum mainnet.
As such, validiums are faster and cheaper, but one has to trade security and data integrity. In contrast, ZK-Rollups offer better security but are slow and expensive.
Source: https://www.coinspeaker.com/polygon-agglayer-drive-zk-l2s/
