Polygon, the Layer 2 solution on Ethereum, has announced that the ZK rollup solution Hermez Network would be merged with the Polygon ecosystem and would henceforth be called as Polygon Hermez in a move that is expected to cost $250 million for Polygon.
The Polygon network has grown rapidly over the last year helped in a great deal by the congestion in the Ethereum network and the high gas fees over the ETH blockchain. These two major pain points were resolved by the Polygon network which helped it to gain massive traction among users and developers as well who wanted a good scaling solution with a solid foundation on the ETH network. But with both the Polygion and ETH networks now stabilising, the company wants to continue to innovate and upgrade its products and after a lot of company, it has zeroed in on Zero-Knowledge based solutions.
The company believes that ZK would be the next technology frontier and has hence decided to focus its full attention on it. The company said that it chose Hermez as it was already live and functioning, it was building an EVM compatible solution which would make it eaiser to merge it with Polygon and is the only decentralised rollup at this point of time. This gives it enormous clout and the merger between these two networks is going to be a big challenge for both the teams. It is not going to be a simple one and the complex merger can be managed only by a couple of very good, technically strong teams which both the companies would be hoping that they have.
No timelines have been given so far, for the merger though the companies have announced that the rokens would be swapped in the ratio of 3.5 MATIC:1 HEZ. Polygon has also announced its commitment to the ZK world and has said that it has set aside $1 billion from its treasury for ZK based solutions with the goal of dominating this space in the coming months. It would indeed be an interesting challenge for the company though no one would doubt its abilities considering the fact that it has been able to provide a stable solution for the problem faced by the ETH network and has gained tremendously from the Layer 2 solution which should have made it ready for the new challenges that lie ahead in the ZK space.
