Polygon Labs, developers of the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain, has announced the decision to discontinue contributions to its open-source framework Polygon Edge to concentrate its resources on the development of a zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography-based framework for existing and upcoming layer-2 networks.
Polygon Edge, commonly referred to as Supernets, is an open-source tool under the Apache License 2.0 for building custom Ethereum-compatible blockchains.
Polygon to Focus on Developing ZK-Proof Network to Support Layer 2 Blockchains
However, over the last year, the blockchain sector has shifted its focus towards developing technologies that use zero-knowledge proof as a core feature.
The ZK protocol is a cryptographic method used to prove knowledge about a piece of the transaction, without revealing the whole data itself.
In a blog post, Polygon Labs noted that instead of Polygon Edge, the team will support on-chain development on the new Polygon CDK framework, which is used for building layer-2 blockchains powered by the ZK-proof technology.
The team expects Polygon CDK to enable developers to build on top of other blockchains while ensuring enhanced privacy and efficiency. The new protocol is also poised to support the interoperability of blockchains within a broad network, a feature that is not natively supported by Polygon Edge.
Several existing blockchain projects, including Immutable X (IMX), Astar (ASTR), Canto (CANTO), Gnosis (GNO), and Manta Network (MNTA) have already committed to using Polygon’s latest framework that “empowers developers to build within a unified ecosystem of ZK-powered L2s.”
Meanwhile, Polygon Labs is also in the race to land the deal for Celo (CELO) network’s migration to L2, as well as, the rumored development of a new layer-2 network for US-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken.
Polygon’s promise of interoperability and the creation of a unified liquidity pool were key to attracting these projects.
The Ethereum sidechain’s current scaling mechanism includes the Polygon PoS (proof-of-stake) sidechain alongside a ZK-rollup known as Polygon zkEVM that was unveiled in March and is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) – a computation engine for Ethereum (ETH) that manages the state of the blockchain and enables smart contract functionality.
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What is the Case of Dogechain And Dogecoin(DOGE)?
Dogechain is a scaling solution proposed by developers claiming affinity with the Dogecoin community as a way of natively supporting DeFi protocols as well as NFTs on the blockchain powering Dogecoin (DOGE).
This is because the original Dogecoin blockchain is a fork of Litecoin (LTC), which itself is an early clone of the Bitcoin Network, and lacked support for smart contract-based applications.
Hence the developers chose Polygon Edge as the open-source template to support their initiative. The Dogechain team claims that DOGE could be used to pay for transactions and as ‘gas fees’ on the network.
In June 2022, the team published the Dogechain whitepaper, which said that Polygon Edge is primarily used to launch new blockchain networks that are fully compatible with Ethereum smart contracts and transactions.
However, the Dogechain team failed to receive the endorsement of the Dogecoin community.
Jens Wiechers, the executive board member of the Dogecoin Foundation, confirmed during Dogechain’s launch that the organization had no affiliation with the project and the founders of the meme token did not have ties to Dogechain either.
It is not clear how the Dogechain project will go ahead as a result of Polygon ending support for Polygon Edge but the stage has been set for future innovations in the blockchain sector.
The upgrade to Polygon CDK is expected to take place sometime in 2024. As part of the process, Polygon also initiated the upgrade of its native token from MATIC to POL on the Ethereum mainnet.
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At the time of writing, Polygon (MATIC) is trading at $0.79 – down 4% in the last 24 hours.
