According to Cointelegraph: Polygon, a Layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum, has reported that its zkEVM (zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine) is facing downtime due to an underlying issue with its blockchain sequencer. The notification came in response to rising speculations within the crypto community regarding the situation.

The issue has disrupted the sequencer's role of organizing and relaying transaction batches to the Polygon zkEVM smart contract on the Ethereum mainnet. However, Polygon emphasized that the problem is localized to the zkEVM and doesn't impact its Proof of Stake (PoS) functionality, Polygon CDK (Chain Development Kit), or any chains deployed using the CDK.

During this downtime, several users wondered why this unexpected and prolonged network downtime did not elicit larger discussions within the crypto community. In their update, Polygon assured its users that they are actively working to resolve the issue and pledged to share a detailed post-mortem once everything is back to normal.

This interruption occurs in the backdrop of growing network outages, such as the significant outage experienced by the Solana network a month prior. As an Ethereum transaction execution environment mimic, the zkEVM, was introduced in March 2023 to improve DeFi transaction finality and reduce costs, and allow for scaling through transaction batching.