Open Source Polygon Plonky3 Is Once Again the Fastest ZK Proving System

With the latest publicly available benchmarking, Polygon Plonky3 is again the fastest zero-knowledge proving system in the industry. 

It can prove more than 2M hashes per second on an M3 Max, accelerating the speed of proof generation by manifold degrees. With these numbers, Polygon Plonky3 has surpassed the impressive 500k hashes per second on a Macbook of StarkWare’s Stwo proving system, in a head-to-head comparison.

Once again, Polygon Plonky3 is the fastest in the industry.

This update on performance comes with important context: Polygon Plonky3 is a toolkit for building custom proving systems. Developers can use it to build custom zkVMs or zkEVMS. The power of open source technology has accretive effects.

Polygon Plonky3 powers important general purpose zkVMs like Valida, an extremely performant zkVM that builds on the research of Polygon co-founder Daniel Lubarov, and Succint’s SP1, which is now integrated in Optimism’s stack as OP Succinct. 

What this means is that Polygon Plonky3 powers OP Succinct—and is integral the ZK future of the OP Stack 😁

It is a really good signal for any stack to adopt Polygon Plonky3, because ZK proofs across all stacks end up creating a better Agglayer experience.

Improved performance paves the way for significantly faster transaction processing, reduced costs, and an overall more efficient and responsive developer and user experience. And ZK proofs on every stack is good to create the best user experience in an aggregated future on the Agglayer.

Below, we dive into what sets Polygon Plonky3 apart as we unpack the benchmarking.

What sets Plonky2 and Polygon Plonky3 apart

Polygon Labs introduced Plonky2 nearly three years ago as an extremely fast proving system optimized for recursion and hardware, and designed to accelerate chain performance. In the time since, it has become one of the most widely adopted ZK proving systems, known for its engineering innovation with Starky and its mathematical innovation with the use of small prime fields. 

Polygon Plonky3 is different from Plonky2 because it has fewer fixed properties. In short, it is less opinionated. 

It’s key characteristics:

• Unparalleled modularity: Polygon Plonky3 empowers developers to craft highly specialized ZK proving systems tailored to specific requirements. This modularity is akin to having a versatile ZK toolkit. Developers handpick and assemble ideal components for any proving system. The result means developers are not limited by the constraints of a one-size-fits-all approach.

Polygon Plonky3, along with its predecessor Plonky2, power leading zkVMs, including 3/6 recently benchmarked zkVMs by the ZK research group, VAC. These include: 

• Succinct Labs’ SP1 (Polygon Plonky3)
• Valida (Polygon Plonky3)
• zkMips (Plonky2). 

Not included in this benchmarking is another zkVM built with Polygon Plonky3 by forking SP1, Argument zkVM. 

Indirectly, this means that every subsequent project that is built with these zkVMs is also built on and powered by Polygon Plonky3. 

These projects can and will grow alongside the mathematical and engineering innovations that occur in the field, because Polygon Plonky3 is open source. ZK developers can mix and match to build a zkVM or zkEVM that best suits their blockchain application.

Configs any which way

The purpose of Polygon Plonky3 is to enable developers to build their own zkVMs and zkEVMs, best suited to their particular use case. 

A developer that needs speed would configure Polygon Plonky3 differently than a developer that requires the smallest proof size. 

Polygon Plonky3 is modular across finite field and hash function:

• Finite fields: BabyBear; Mersenne31; Goldilocks
• Hash functions: Poseidon; Poseidon2; Rescue; BLAKE3; Keccak-256; Monolith

At the moment, the only available polynomial commitment scheme is FRI, but support for others is currently being developed. 

Open source ftw

All the above is a strong endorsement of the open source ethos. 

A deliberate decision was made to open source Polygon Plonky3—and the entire industry has benefited from it. But that’s the nature of open source technology: accretive effects, faster time to development, and new horizons. 

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Check out guru and Polygon Labs developer Brian Seong's range check on Polygon Plonky3, and be sure to tune into the blog and our social channels to keep up with updates about Polygon.

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