Polygon, a scaling solution to the Ethereum blockchain, has announced its rebrand as Polygon 2.0, with the aim of unifying liquidity of the various networks in its ecosystem. The plan also provides for restaking tokens, allowing investors to stake the same tokens on multiple projects. Polygon plans to give developers the ability to add new decentralized chains on demand, joining competitors in the pursuit of fostering broader ecosystems of specialized but compatible blockchains.
Under the new tech stack, Polygon will link the various Polygon chains through a shared crypto bridge powered by zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. Unified liquidity is the key to everything in Polygon 2.0, said Brendan Farmer, the co-founder of Polygon in a press release. We need to support unlimited scalability, but the entire Polygon 2.0 ecosystem must still feel like using a single chain.
The new architecture will include a coordination layer to confirm cross-chain transactions, while the shared bridge will be powered by ZK proofs. With zero knowledge proofs, we can basically bridge or initiate cross-chain transactions in a way that’s safe, and in a way that is instant, Farmer said. Native Ethereum tokens will be deposited into a single contract on Ethereum, so when a user transacts across Polygon chains, the corresponding assets will be mapped to the tokens deposited on Ethereum.
The proposal also calls for an emphasis on restaking, which allows users to repurpose their staked crypto to ensure the security of other applications on a blockchain. I think restaking is a really nice answer to that question where there will be validators that stake the token in order to validate chains on Polygon, Farmer said. They’ll be able to not only validate one chain, but they’ll be able to restake their tokens to actually serve as decentralized validators.
The announcement about Polygon’s new architecture and tech stack comes just a few days after it shared a proposal to upgrade its Polygon PoS chain to a zkEVM validium. I think one of the guiding principles behind Polygon 2.0 is we want to build this sort of foundational piece of the internet, the value layer for the internet, Farmer said.