Last week, Polygon introduced the “type 1 prover”— a technology that can facilitate EVM-compatible chains to adopt zero-knowledge proofs.

The type 1 prover is expected to be released later this year. It will be incorporated into Polygon’s CDK (software stack), marking an advancement over the project’s previous type 2 proving mechanism, which lacked compatibility with other EVM chains. “The type-1 prover can generate zero-knowledge proofs for any EVM chain without necessitating hard forks or adjustments to existing clients,” Brendan Farmer, a co-founder of Polygon, told The Block.

Polygon Labs wants to leverage the prover to transition a wide range of blockchains, including side chains and optimistic roll-ups, into validiums — a specialized form of Layer 2 networks that utilize …