Polygon Labs has announced the arrival of a new open source technology ready to improve and democratize the development of the crypto world.
Let’s talk about the new zero-knowledge proof system Plonky3, which after years of design is now ready for production under a public license.
All cryptographic developers will soon be able to use this modular toolkit to launch their own zkVM and zkEVM networks.
Let’s see all the details below.
The new generation of ZK Plonky3 systems launched by Polygon with open source license
Yesterday, the blockchain developer Polygon Labs presented to its crypto community the new verification system ZK Plonky3, with an open source license.
It is a set of tools that allow the generation of zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs, essential for the development of scaling networks.
Polygon by now has a soft spot for ZK technology: as reported in its latest blog post, nowadays there are no more efficient scaling techniques.
The so-called “zk-proofs” allow Polygon to aim for transaction speed, improve security, and unify liquidity through a network of sovereign chains.
We remember that this type of innovation typical of the crypto world is also of an open source nature and is used today by a myriad of projects: among the most famous we mention ZkSync, Starknet, Linea, Scroll, and Polygon zkEMV.
the next-gen zk proving system has landed—Polygon Plonky3 is production ready and open-source.
already powering @SuccinctLabs’ SP1 zkVM, Polygon Plonky3 provides super-performant zk-proving, while SP1 abstracts away the complexity for devs.
continue the thread for more. pic.twitter.com/RubcRkB34M
— Polygon | Aggregated (@0xPolygon) July 16, 2024
Plonky3 represents the next generation of ZK verification systems, super fast and with a modular predisposition. This new toolkit is now ready for production, open to all open source, and will be licensed under MIT / Apache.
Developers and code enthusiasts of the crypto world can now leverage the Plonky3 toolkit to design the next zkEVM network or zkEVM of the future.
The best part of this verification system is that it extends its flexibility to any specific use case, such as a customized demonstrator.
Differences between the previous Plonky2 technology and the new open source Plonky3 system
Compared to the previous version Plonky2, launched by Polygon just 2 years ago, the new open source verification system is much more efficient and malleable for the development of scaling crypto networks.
Just launched in January 2022 by Polygon developer Daniel Lubarov and his team, Plonky2 seemed like an incredibly fast and secure software package.
Known for its engineering innovation with Starky, this single verification system was focused on ultra-fast recursion through hardware optimization.
Since then, it has become one of the most adopted web3 solutions in the crypto sector for the development of ZK proof systems. Over time, some technical properties of Plonky2 have also been reshaped to accelerate certain types of blockchain applications common.
We're excited to announce Plonky2, an implementation of PLONK+FRI which is focused on fast recursion.
After experimenting with several approaches, we've reached a level of performance that we're happy with, with recursive proofs taking ~170 ms on a Macbook Pro. https://t.co/U3Y0bfrtiL
— Daniel Lubarov (@dlubarov) January 10, 2022
After two years Plonky3 seemed to completely change the game for Polygon and its crypto community, introducing an objectively superior system.
First of all, Plonky3, as also reported by the same developer Daniel Lubarov, can achieve scalability greater than 5-10 times that of Plonky2.
Additionally, unlike the previous one, this generation of ZK verification systems is completely open source, that is, open to everyone.
Also on the security front, we can only mention the solidity of the new software tools, verified through audits on the Github repositories.
Plonky3 differs from the second version essentially because it has fewer fixed properties, is more flexible and suitable for the development of specific crypto solutions
An advantage for all Polygon developers and the entire crypto ecosystem
As mentioned, the developers of Polygon and more generally all those who work in the crypto sector, will be able to freely use Plonky3 as an open source tool.
Industry insiders can therefore launch their own zkVM or zkEVM type blockchain, following infrastructural objectives modular.
These can configure the toolkit in a completely customized way according to their own needs.
The characteristic of open source opens the doors to an era of great improvement for the blockchains powered by ZK proofs. Thousands of developers can take advantage of the technology produced in-house by Polygon.
The libraries of Plonky3 will grow together with the mathematical and engineering innovations that occur in the crypto sector.
zk devs after finding the polygon plonky3 repos pic.twitter.com/KSBLOLHrJ1
— Polygon | Aggregated (@0xPolygon) July 16, 2024
Plonky3 has already been adopted by projects such as Valida and SP1 by Succinct Labs. Indirectly, this means that every subsequent project that relies on these zkVM also relies on Plonky3.
Developers ZK can mix and match to create a zkVM or zkEVM that best suits the blockchain application.
Following for example the SP1 configuration, one can leverage the development speed and code maintainability of Rust, while simultaneously maintaining the performance and solidity guarantees of Plonky3.
The configuration of Plonky3 used in SP1 was selected primarily based on performance in the widest range of blockchain applications, including recursion, signature hashing and the arbitrary computation of programs such as the bear demonstration.
SP1 was obtained using BabyBear for the finite field and Poseidon2 for the hash function. This choice is motivated by the fact that BabyBear provides speed both on CPU and on GPU while Poseidon2 offers a super scalable STARK recursion.
This is however just an example: with Plonky3, the developers of Polygon and the web 3 landscape can choose widely customizable configurations. At a high level, we point out that Plonky3 is modular through finite fields and hash functions:
Finite fields: BabyBear; Mersenne31; Goldilocks
Hash functions: Poseidon; Poseidon2; Rescue; BLAKE3; Keccak-256; Monolith
