- Polygon (MATIC) wants to accelerate ZK development with custom hardware.
- As part of this effort, the company announced a significant investment.
- This project is expected to greatly contribute to Polygon’s unified architecture.
Last year, Polygon (MATIC) Labs presented a new vision for their eponymous Ethereum scaling project: to connect the entire Web3 on top of Layer 1 chains. At the heart of Polygon’s new vision is zero-knowledge technology, which they see as the ultimate goal for Ethereum scaling.
With this new roadmap, the project continues to push the boundaries of what is possible with ZK technology, from delivering system improvements to developing new zkVMs. In a recent example, the team revealed a significant hardware investment to further accelerate the development of ZK technology.
Polygon (MATIC) Labs Bet on Fabric Cryptography Chip
Polygon (MATIC) Labs is looking to accelerate ZK development with custom hardware. On Tuesday, September 10, Polygon (MATIC) Labs announced that it will invest $5 million in recently launched crypto startup Fabric Cryptography to acquire crypto-centric chips called Verifiable Processing Units (VPUs).
Explaining their investment rationale, Polygon (MATIC) Labs emphasized that ZK’s main limitation is its efficiency in generating and verifying proofs. The team explained that this means that ZK software will always be limited by the hardware on which it runs.
Polygon (MATIC) Labs claims that software optimizations have been impressive given hardware limitations, citing the Plonky2 proof system that optimizes fast recursive proofs for consumer-grade devices, but argues that more is still needed.
"the long-term goals for ZK require something beyond faster proving—it requires real-time proving. And to achieve this while keeping proof-generation low-cost and practical, a new kind of hardware is needed," the team wrote.
According to Polygon (MATIC) Labs, Fabric’s VPU is an essential hardware that is expected to help accelerate ZK development just as GPU advancements in AI have accelerated.
Benefits of Polygon’s Ambition
According to Polygon Labs, the recent investment will “accelerate” all ZK-based Polygon protocols, starting with the VPUs for Plonky2 and Plonky3, which provide essential systems for the AggLayer, the interoperability solution at the core of Polygon’s proposed aggregate chain architecture.
Version 1 of AggLayer is scheduled to be released in February 2024, allowing connected chains to access the integrated bridge. However, according to the developers, the protocol is still far from its end goal, which would allow users to experience an ecosystem of connected chains as if they were a single blockchain, with near-instant cross-chain interactions and atomic transactions.
Polygon (MATIC) Labs expects that efficiency gains from Fabric’s VPUs will allow them to achieve this final form more quickly.
On the other side
- Fabric’s VPU has not yet been tested in real combat.
- August 2024, Fabric presentation $33 million Series A funding round that also included Polygon Labs.
Why this matters
While many have touted ZK as the ultimate scaling goal, efficiency limitations have often prevented projects from exploring the technology or, for ZK-centric teams like Polygon, from maximizing its potential. That’s why Fabric’s VPUs promise to be a game-changer.
To learn more about Polygon (MATIC), read:
Polygon plans to integrate all blockchains, CEO explains
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