Polygon has just announced a major update to its zero-knowledge proving system, introducing Plonky3. This new version is designed to be more flexible than the previous one, Plonky2, which came out in 2022.
Zero-knowledge proving systems help ensure the cryptographic security of multi-layer distributed networks. They create proofs that summarize off-chain transactions and feed this information back to base blockchains like Ethereum.
According to Polygon, these systems make sure that transactions are executed correctly and that the blockchain’s state is updated properly. Plonky3 is now available as open-source software under the MIT and Apache licenses.
Plonky2 was focused on lightning-fast recursion by optimizing for hardware. In contrast, Plonky3 is an open-source toolkit that allows developers to build their own virtual machines using zero-knowledge cryptography.
When Polygon released Plonky2, they claimed it was 100 times faster than existing alternatives at the time. However, it had some performance issues and lacked the generality needed for broader applications. In an interview, Polygon co-founder Daniel Lubarov said that:
“Plonky2 partly had some performance issues, and partly didn’t quite have the generality that we needed.”
In a separate Q&A, Lubarov elaborated on the new system. He stated that Plonky3 “builds on the successes of Plonky2,” which had set a high standard in the industry. He said:
“Plonky3 takes this a step further by providing a toolkit that supports a wide range of configurations, enabling developers to optimize for speed, proof size, or a balance of the two depending on their needs.”
Discussing the impact of Plonky3 on Ethereum and its performance compared to Plonky2, Lubarov explained that making fair comparisons among zero-knowledge proving systems is tough.
“Each system has its strengths and weaknesses, both in terms of the types of computations it excels at proving as well as the hardware that it performs best on,” he said.
However, for certain computations and configurations, Plonky3 is about 5–10 times faster than Plonky2.
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