Introducing the Polygon Hermez zkEVM Proof Wrapper with Plonky2 GoldiBear

We are thrilled to announce a major breakthrough in our development: the Polygon Hermez zkEVM (PIL Stark) proof wrapper implemented using Plonky2 GoldiBear. 

This innovation can heavily improve zkEVM Layer 2 attestations costs by significantly enhancing both efficiency and performance, enabling unparalleled cost and latency reductions.

Our calculation shows the possibility of aggregating up to 1024 Polygon zkEVM proofs in just 5.2 seconds (*) using Plonky2 GoldiBear.

This new speed is unmatched in zkEVM L2s proof aggregation, setting a new benchmark for efficiency and making it a concrete possibility.

This reduces drastically the operational cost making on-chain proof verification incredibly more economical without additional latency.

Key Performance Highlights

1. Our benches show that we are able to wrap a Polygon Hermez zkEVM proof into a Plonky2 GoldiBear proof in just 900 ms (on a 11th Gen Intel i9-11900K CPU), a massive efficiency leap.
2. The wrap has a very low memory footprint taking just a few hundred megabytes. 
3. Additionally, there is no more need for the Polygon zkEVM prover to wrap proofs in fflonk, saving approximately 90 seconds of computation time during zkEVM proving.

By combining the removal of the expensive fflonk wrap with optimized aggregation, Plonky2 GoldiBear drastically reduces the overall on-chain verification cost by several orders of magnitude, potentially even reducing the current latency.

Technological Advancements

1. A Plonky2 GoldiBear PIL Stark Verifiersome text
   • The proof wrapper is generic with respect to the PIL (Polynomial Identity Language) and can be used potentially also to wrap other PIL Stark proofs 
2. Improved zkEVM Prover Efficiency:some text
   • By avoiding the expensive fflonk wrapping process from all the zkEVMs the proving process achieves faster proof generation with significantly less resource consumption.

Implications for zkEVM Layer 2 Attestation

• Cost Efficiency:some text
  • Given the extremely low computational requirements for both wrapping and aggregation we can achieve significantly lower costs for zkEVM proofs on-chain verification.
• Scalability:some text
  • Faster proof processing enables handling larger volumes of zkEVM proofs, facilitating broader adoption of zkEVM-based applications and more frequent attestation improving transaction finality for users.

Looking Ahead

The Polygon Hermez zkEVM proof wrapper with Plonky2 GoldiBear will be integrated into the SNARKtor protocol, enabling its potential for zkEVM Layer 2 attestations. This integration ensures streamlined operations and even greater performance efficiencies.

*  Theoretical lower bound aggregation time considering fully parallel proving and proof recursion performed in a tree-like structure. The source proofs are Polygon Hermez zkEVM PIL Stark batch proofs