Ethereum (ETH) is about to move from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). This has a number of advantages, but scalability is not one of them in the first instance. But a new scalability solution could boost transaction throughput on the Ethereum network to the level of Visa. This was stated by Mihailo Bjelic, co-founder of Polygon (MATIC), in an interview with Cointelegraph.
Software Upgrade for Ethereum
A software upgrade called zkEVM should reduce Ethereum’s transaction costs and increase throughput. A zkEVM is a new solution for layer-2 protocols, so it is not directly in the base layer of the network. It stands for ‘zero knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine’. I canprocess intensive transactions, so that the bottleneck effect that sits on Ethereum less.
Polygon is such a layer-2 protocol and should in the long run not only reduce transaction costs, but also drastically improve scalability and speed up the network. This will allow it to serve a larger network. And Ethereum really needs such solutions if Web 3.0 is to get big, says Bjelic.
His co-founderr Sandeep Nailwal recently stated that zkEVMs can reduce Ethereum’s transaction costs by 90% and scale the transaction speed to about 40 to 50 transactions per second. Bjelic says it is difficult to estimate, but in principle it should work. Also the finality should improve a lot. At the moment it takes about 1 minute to make a transaction fully ‘official’. That should be reduced to about six seconds. Polygon grandly announced its zkEVM solution on July 20:
We are proud to announce a giant leap forward for Ethereum scaling and ZK innovation.
Introducing Polygon #zkEVMthe first EVM equivalent ZK L2.
Today we’re releasing a complete implementation, fully open-source, and we’re just getting started.
[1/6] pic.twitter.com/P929DRCT1y
— Polygon – MATIC 💜 (@0xPolygon) July 20, 2022
Many layer 1’s are going to disappear
It should be emphasized that Polygon will not be the only zkEVM protocol. So there is even more competition within the layer 2 world, in addition to the competition that exists for the layer 1 protocols that compete with Ethereum.
But Bjelic thinks that many of these layer 1 blockchains will disappear due to a lack of interest. The Ethereum ecosystem is very robust, as are the network effects. He cites the number of developers, the number of programming languages, liquidity and user numbers as important factors.