Zero-Knowledge: The Perfect Work
Vision that only exists if it can be proven
Sindri’s vision met Eitri’s demand: each execution needed a proof that could be checked. The smiths knew the discipline’s value and the need to review circuits and contracts. Their ambition was vast; responsibility meant checking each piece before entrusting it with the realm’s weight.
On 27 March 2023, Polygon zkEVM launched its mainnet beta. EVM compatibility aimed to ease contract migration, but documented differences and further improvements remained. This was not proof of perfect equivalence for every Ethereum behavior. The beta label reminded the smiths that testing and refinement were still necessary.
The launch came after more than two years of intensive development, three external security audits, a bug bounty program that distributed hundreds of thousands of dollars in rewards, and formal verification of critical components of the proof system. Jordi Baylina and his team did not launch when they were ready for the market. They launched when they were ready for the responsibility of having real user value dependent on the correctness of the proofs.
Zero-knowledge cryptography allows a prover to demonstrate knowledge of information without revealing the information itself, or, in the context of zkEVMs, that a computation was executed correctly without the verifier needing to redo the computation. This means Midgard can verify hundreds of transactions with a single compact proof, instead of executing each transaction individually. The asymmetry between proof cost and verification cost is what makes the model economically sustainable at scale.
Checking a proof spared the work of repeating the full execution. That was the artifact’s strength, supported by cryptographic assumptions and correct implementation. The smiths kept watch after lighting the forge: audits, fixes and care with upgrade keys also guarded travelers.