Bankless - Polygon’s zkEVM with Jordi Baylina | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #4

Starting point is 00:00:12 We are at the Axilar Interoperability Series. And next up in this conversation, we are talking to Jordi of the ZK. Evm. Used to be ZK. Hermes, but then it was acquired by Polygon to make the ZK Polygon EVM, which is now one of the hottest wars in the Layer 2 space. So that is what's coming up next. Right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

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Starting point is 00:03:12 What are you going to talk about? Well, we are going to talk very much about connecting roll-ups. You know, this year is going to be the year of roll-ups. We're also seeing, and we are going to be talking about how we connect all these roll-ups and how we create this community. We keep the Ethereum community together, as a whole. So that's going to be probably the most, the biggest topic on. the panel. But we'll see.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Yeah. And there's a big conversation going on, of course, which is at the interop conference. There's also interop between layer twos. And I think is this about specifically interoperability between Ethereum layer twos or is this even broader than that? I think it's about layer twos. But I mean, I'm open to any discussion here. Wherever the moderator leads? I'm not the moderator. Yeah. So Jordi, was Polygon the first EVEM? I mean, it's just seeing the first, and we are not even the first yet.

Starting point is 00:04:10 So we are going to launch a main net on March 27 if everything goes okay. And this is not, oh, it's an important milestone, but it's not the only milestone. So it's like we will launch this in mainnet. It's going to be a beta. It's a lot of improvements needs to be done. We still need to add a lot of recompiled smart contracts. We need to grow in the scalability. So this is not a matter of who's first, who's last.

Starting point is 00:04:42 Okay, I know that marketing people, they love these stuff. Content producers also love it, by the way. Yeah, exactly. But this is not about that. You know, this is about building. Here we are a strong community, many projects that we are trying to scale Ethereum. Each one is building the, you know, the solution. they believe in it more.

Starting point is 00:05:04 We are experimenting. We are learning a lot. And we are moving forward on that direction. The evolution, we as a community with it in the last two years, has been huge. But still a lot of things to do in all the sites. So, I mean, we are going to be the first, probably going to be the first in having a complete, pop code compatible

Starting point is 00:05:31 eBM ZK-A-BM in Mainnet, in production, open to everybody and with zero friction for the users where you can use. So I think it's an important it's a very advanced system what we are going to launch. But again, it's an important milestone,

Starting point is 00:05:51 but it's just a milestone. Certainly. Yeah, so when business development people or builders or even just users, What questions do they frequently ask you? What's the frequently asked question when they come up to you and talk about the Polygon ZK.EVM? Well, the questions, I mean, there are questions,

Starting point is 00:06:10 all sorts of questions, but questions about the scalability, how the roll-ups will scale, if, you know, and how compatibility, what if this is going to be compatible or not, what can be done, things about that availability. There is a lot of dobs still in the community. It's a new system, so it's normal. The people don't fully understand how everything works altogether.

Starting point is 00:06:39 There are some confusions. We are trying to clarify some confusions. Last week in Twitter, I was just trying to clarify, for example, things about scalability. Now, the prover is not the limitation on the scalability. This is one of the topic, okay? But things about the sequencer, when we are talking about a centralized sequencer, what it means, okay? That doesn't mean that's, yeah, it's centralized, but it's not, you can still have some properties of decentralization, like censorship resistant and so on.

Starting point is 00:07:11 And even if what happened if the sequencer just falls on what happened with it. There's a lot of things that we need to explain and how this works. So walk us through the timeline for the Polygon ZK EVM. When will I be able to go play on it? So right now you can already play it. You know, it's a test net. It's been running for, has been running for two months or more than two months right now. We next week, well, tomorrow, if everything works, okay, we probably will do a regenesis of this test net.

Starting point is 00:07:45 Regenesis is when you like shut it down, start it back up again. And now it's main net? Yeah, it's going to be very close to what should be in mainnet. We're still running the final audits. And finding, even now, we just finding things. Security is a huge topic. I think it's the thing that has more concern on that. Again, we're doing, we're spending a lot of effort inside the team and outside the team on that.

Starting point is 00:08:13 And if everything, again, if everything works as it should, we should launch on March 27th. This beta version of a mainnet. And what does that beta version mean? Like, what's the different between beta and main net? main net, but it's the first main net deployment. So expect that there is bugs there. It's the first

Starting point is 00:08:36 version. It's the fact that we are probably going to change things in there. So it's an important step because at some point you need to launch. And at some point you need to... It's like training wheels. Training wheels. We are going to start with a training wheels one. We are

Starting point is 00:08:52 going to have a kill switch. We're going to remove that as soon as we can, but it's going to be a kill switch. It's going to be some central points on there. We are trying to keep as preventive and as safe as possible. There is always a risk. It's important that the people understand that this is, you know, first versions of anything.

Starting point is 00:09:16 It's easier to have bags. We are running a lot of audits. We run it internal audits. We are going to run a back bounty. We're going to continue running audits. We will spend as much as we can on security. We need to launch this just to spin up this and to have this in production. We'll see.

Starting point is 00:09:36 So it's an important, it's an step, it's an important step. It's an step that at some point we have to do. But the people that's using this network needs to understand what they are using and what's the status of this network. So that's why it's important to say that this is a beta, that this is the first. version, please be cautious on how you are using that. All that I think is important. The users understand what it is. Don't go crazy.

Starting point is 00:10:07 You know, don't do some airdrobs, billionaire, airdrobs or staking or whatever in there, okay? Because I don't want to cure, it's a lot of mistake. It's not only polling on stake. It's also the ecosystem mistake and the Ethereum mistake. So here we should not go crazy. in these new technologies that just out of the oven

Starting point is 00:10:33 in there. Could you help me understand what does it mean to have a bug in a ZK EVM? I think the whole ZK world is a new frontier for all of us and for the non-technical people like me when you say like, oh, there could be bugs,

Starting point is 00:10:45 what kind of bugs could there be? How bad could that be? So here we categorize the box in four categories. And let me explain, let me just name the four. And the four, the first one is a smart contract, just normal smart contract. This is normal thing.

Starting point is 00:11:01 Not at the protocol layer. This is, then we have a, the other starting, the Prover box, okay? The Prover will have three types of bags. We have the correctness bags. We have the soundness bags. And then we have like a situation where you cannot prove. It's like a stop the Prooper. You can, it's a transition.

Starting point is 00:11:19 The Prover breaks. The Prover breaks. And the Prover, it doesn't move forward. Sure. So that's another kind of bugs. Of these three, of course, smart contracts is as critical as any other smart contracts. That's a technology we now about. That's a known quantity.

Starting point is 00:11:33 Yeah, exactly. But here, the most critical one is the correctness one. Correctness one means that you are executing a normal transaction, and maybe at the final this transaction, you get an infinite amount of ether. That's something that would be a bag, and it would be a really bad back, because we could not do very much on that. We could press a kill switch. in the main net if we see that

Starting point is 00:11:57 and just try to avoid the withdrawal. We have some mechanisms to monitor that and so on. But this is a really hard bag. Here, we need to say here that I'm quite confident with this

Starting point is 00:12:11 kind of bugs because we pass all the Ethereum tests. All the Ethereum test that applies. The Stetium test about the smart contract that we are not implementing, of course, this doesn't pass, but that's not because there is a problem. Right.

Starting point is 00:12:25 Okay, but for the relevant tests, all the relevant tests to the ZDKBM, which are the most, most of them, they are passing. So this means that the correctness of the protocol is very well proven. Sure. Of course, there are still some specific things on the EBM that, you don't have never the 100% warranties, okay? But here I'm quite confident that this correctness together with all the audits and all together, we should be okay on that. But again, never 100%, like smart contracts. You never are 100% confident on that. But the degree of confidence is, I would say, is high enough to launch in a beta.

Starting point is 00:13:14 Then we have soundness. Soundness is, I mean, this is probably. the one that's time, so it's the one that's easier to be. So it's very easy that we find some soundness error. We did a lot, a lot of work just checking on that, but we find a lot of them. So it's easy that maybe there are some more that we find in the future. For this, okay, this is, we need to move forward and try to find them and move. But the good thing of these bags is that if one of these bags is in the system,

Starting point is 00:13:50 the user will not lose funds. So we are going to be at the beginning the only prover and we are not going to prove something wrong. So it's literally impossible or very difficult for one of these errors to impact

Starting point is 00:14:08 in a user funds. Probably the system will become centralized so the idea is the system follow back in a centralization. We probably have to update to upgrade the smart contract but the user will not impact the user phones or something like that, as far as we are trusted, which is not we are building. Okay, so that's why it's important to go through all these bags and find all of these soundness

Starting point is 00:14:33 bags. So it's important to go to all these soundness bags. But from the main net launch perspective, this is less critical because this is these ways. And the last one is that you just stop the network. And here is just a timeout. So if the network is stopped it for six months, then the network will just hold and we'll just upgrade the contract. So like soundness, well, this would be maybe a bigger impact,

Starting point is 00:14:58 but more in the operation, because the network maybe would be stopped it for maybe one week. It's a timeout on that. But that would be the impact. So in one big, we just upgrade the smart contract and the users will continue running and the releases would recall. So these are the four categorizations of the back. I think I explain you very much the concerns and here the balances and the trade-offs for launching.

Starting point is 00:15:28 I think it's important here to be very, very transparent and explain these very clear, especially for early users. But again, this is, you know, we need to move forward on that. You know, if we need to wait, but this happens to any blockchain project. So if you need to wait to be 100%. ensure that your system is safe, you will never launch. Right. Yes. But in the other side, you can also not be crazy.

Starting point is 00:15:56 You cannot launch things that you know that's the probability of being bags are going to be high. So here finding the right trade-off on when you launch. What's this? Who much did you minimize the risk? This is, I would say, probably this is the most difficult decision-making that any blockchain project needs to take at some point. And this is where we are right now in Polygon. Certainly.

Starting point is 00:16:26 Well, I really appreciate all that thought process and the idea of just some natural balance between order and chaos comes to mind where you can't be too ordered because you'll never launch, but you definitely can't be chaotic because that doesn't go in crypto. And the bankless metaphor of this is the frontier

Starting point is 00:16:40 also comes to mind. And so, you know, to the rewards, go the bold. But also, you don't want to be too bold because you might die and never come back. So, Jordy, I know you've got to talk to run to. So I appreciate all of your time and walking us through the Polygons, ZK.EBM. I really appreciate it. It's a pleasure.

Starting point is 00:16:55 Cheers.

Bankless - Polygon’s zkEVM with Jordi Baylina | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #4

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