Mihailo Bjelic of Polygon Explains Reasons For Choosing ZK Technology

Mihailo Bjelic, the co-founder of the blockchain platform Polygon, tweeted reasons as to why his team chose zero-knowledge (ZK) proof-based solutions and how it is fairing so far. Bjelic added that there was a buzz around why he chose ZK solutions and was writing to kill the curiosity.

One of the frequent questions that we get is why @0xPolygon has multiple zk efforts/teams. ?

A short thread on why we picked this strategy and how it is playing out so far..

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— Mihailo Bjelic (@MihailoBjelic) December 13, 2022

Bjelic stated that when he introduced ZK solutions more than a year ago, he knew that they wanted to bet big on the technology. Along with that, he wanted to go for the Holy Grail, EVM, and compatible ZK solutions, while knowing that it would not be a piece of cake to achieve in a short span of time.

However, in order to achieve the desired goal, the teams had to approach it from multiple angles, with as many hands as possible. Polygon then took help from teams including, Hermez, Zero (ex Mir), and Miden.

Bjelic further added that:

With the aid of the helping hands and a different approach to delivering the Holy Grail, Zero delivered incredible optimizations like Plonky2 and Goldilocks Field. While Hermez was shipping-oriented and has EVM expertise, Miden was deeply experienced in deep STARK.

Bjelic believes that the result of the collaboration was the innovation of zkEVM, the world’s first full-featured zkEVM implementation, which was delivered in one year instead of the five-year anticipation.

In appreciation, Bjelic added that teams were motivationally driven to develop their ideas, and Polygon tried its best to promote cooperation among them. The mutual cooperation, he believes, has helped the project has reached its mainnet stage.

While concluding the thread, Bjelic added that this is just the beginning of milestones set to achieve. Bjelic has a clear roadmap set for the next one to two years, and can clearly see how his teams’ efforts in ZK will shortly converge and fit together.

For the uninitiated, zero-knowledge (ZK) proof-based solutions are scaling solutions that use mathematics to generate concise proofs of transaction validity that can then be validated by anybody, including Ethereum miners.

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