Polygon’s zkEVM Public Testnet to enable smoother Ethereum migration

Decentralized Ethereum scaling platform Polygon (MATIC) announced the launch of Polygon zkEVM Public Testnet, an “Ethereum-equivalent” ecosystem with cross-compatibility to existing smart contracts, developer tools and wallets built on Ethereum and Polygon PoS.

Zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) is a layer-2 construction on top of Ethereum that aims to improve scalability through mass transfer processing rolled into a single transaction. The testnet launched under Polygon’s zero-knowledge R&D team as a full-featured, open-source implementation of zkEVM.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols Aave (AAVE) and Uniswap (UNI), along with Web3 social platform Lens and gaming studio Midnight Society, will be among the first projects to deploy on the zkEVM testnet.

Polygon encourages Web3 developers to collaborate by deploying contracts and identifying bugs as the platform spearheads the adoption of zk technology. In the words of Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic:

“We invite the whole community to try out the testnet, help us test its limits, break things and identify bugs, so we can all together deliver the first zkEVM to the world!”

The full equivalency with the EVM allows developers to migrate to zkEVM without the need for new programming languages and tools or translation of existing code, which also includes a completely open-sourced zk-Prover mechanism.

The announcement highlights that Polygon zkEVM offers greater capital efficiency while enabling businesses to build fast, low-fee decentralized applications on Ethereum.

Related: Polygon partners with ocean conservation NGO to advance ocean literacy

Last month, on Sept. 27, Space and Time raised $20 million in strategic funding from investors like Microsoft’s M12 fund — the venture capital arm of Microsoft — Avalanche (AVAX) and Polygon.

The $20 million funding round saw participation from several other investors, including Coin DCX and HashKey.

Michelle Gonzalez, an executive at M12, expressed that Microsoft’s VC firm is looking forward to seeing how centralized systems can be automated and connected to smart contracts.