What's Really Happening on Polygon zkEVM? Summer Edition

Polygon Labs

September 4, 2023

Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta grew considerably this summer. More dApps, more activity, more users, and more volume. This post will break down what’s been happening on the network over the last three months using metrics constructed from on-chain data.

Milestones

Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta launched on March 27. On June 14, the network had successfully processed one million transactions.

Polygon #zkEVM hit a milestone: 1 million transactions

Not long ago, an EVM-equivalent ZK rollup was considered too expensive to be practical.

Today, Polygon zkEVM is one of the most affordable and usable L2s.

“Unconstrained scalability for mankind.”
-@VitalikButerin pic.twitter.com/lKC3ebshgn
— Polygon (Labs) (@0xPolygonLabs) June 14, 2023

There were several other milestones this summer:

Proof-generation crossed the 100,000 mark in June. As of August, the protocol has generated more than 600,000 ZK proofs.
On Aug. 4, the network hit an all-time high for daily transaction volume: 122,146
At the start of June, 11,152 ETH had been bridged to the network . By the end of August, ETH on Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta had more than doubled to 27,107. (Source: L2Beat)

Transactions

Between June and August, the number of transactions processed on Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta lapped the one-million mark. As of Aug. 30, Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta has processed more than 5,000,000 transactions. Nearly 2,000,000 transactions were processed in August alone. ‍

The activity in August tells the story. The daily transaction volume exceeded 100,000 three times.

What were transaction fees like on Aug. 4? An average of $0.34.

The median values for transaction fees are relatively the same. Over the entire summer, the median transaction fee on Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta was $0.35. These are the week-by-week median gas costs, from May 29 to Aug. 31.