2023 has been an important year for Polygon, as Baylina reflects, as several products have been shipped that have added to the performance of its scaling protocol and provide the means for developers to build decentralized applications (DApps) and interoperable services.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has been an incredible year for Polygon, the zkEVM was like the first big event. Also the creation, design and announcement of Polygon 2.0 with the proof-of-stake (PoS) integration and all these aggregation layers, is an important milestone,\u201d Baylina explains. <\/p>\n
Polygon released its open-source zkEVM mainnet beta in March 2023, which delivers reduced transaction costs and increased throughput of smart contract deployments. The technology allows thousands of transactions to be batched off-chain, with cryptographic proof containing a minimal data summary posted to the Ethereum mainnet.<\/p>\n
Polygon\u2019s zkEVM mimics the transaction execution environment of Ethereum\u2019s mainnet. The open-source zkEVM allows DApps to scale through transaction batching, unlocking higher performance.<\/p>\n
The release of Polygon\u2019s Chain Development Kit (CDK) in Sept. 2023 dramatically opened the ecosystem to new development. Baylina previously spoke to Cointelegraph on the introduction of the service, which allows developers to launch bespoke ZK-powered layer 2 protocols on Ethereum, tailored to the requirements of their project.<\/p>\n
A key aspect is that Polygon CDK enables automatic access to liquidity across all of Polygon\u2019s chains and the broader Ethereum ecosystem, providing \u201con-demand scale, without fragmenting liquidity.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Baylina described the current state of Polygon as a \u201cconstellation with a single star being the zkEVM.\u201d The transition of Polygon PoS to a zkEVM validium will expedite the scaling of the network and allow ecosystem protocols to become interconnected. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is complex. It\u2019s not an easy task. Polygon is a decentralized system. So first, there needs to be consensus for the switch. Then comes moving all the bridges, continuing the network, and giving continuity to all these applications. This is challenging,\u201d Baylina adds.<\/p>\n
Polygon released three Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs) in Sept. 2023. This includes a proposal for the transition and specifications that will see MATIC tokens become POL tokens, which will become the Polygon proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol\u2019s native token.<\/p>\n
PIP-17 will include the initiation of the upgrade from MATIC to POL. This includes its transition to POL as the native gas token and staking token for the Polygon ecosystem, as well as the launch of the staking layer and migration of Polygon public chains.<\/p>\n