Polygon zkEVM, the primary scaling solution developed by Polygon, has resumed regular operations following a significant outage.
The problem was first reported by Polygon on Saturday night, attributing it to a sequencer malfunction after a Layer 1 incident. It was clarified that the issue was isolated to zkEVM, with all other Polygon networks remaining unaffected.
Polygon zkEVM Mainnnet Beta faced an issue with its sequencer due to an L1 reorg. We are working on fully resolving the issue and will follow up with a detailed post-mortem.
This only impacts Polygon zkEVM (which is the only rollup) and does not impact Polygon PoS, Polygon CDK,…
— Polygon | Aggregated (@0xPolygon) March 23, 2024
After 27 hours, the project announced that Polygon zkEVM had returned to its usual operations following intervention from its Emergency Council. Any future system updates will be subject to a 10-day timelock before activation, as per the network’s emergency protocol.
Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta has resumed operations.
The Emergency Council for Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta activated the emergency state to allow the Polygon zkEVM Core Team to apply a necessary fix to the system, allowing L1 settlement of Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta to resume. Upon…
— Polygon | Aggregated (@0xPolygon) March 25, 2024
Despite the outage, Polygon’s MATIC token has seen a 5% increase in the past 24 hours amidst a broader market recovery, according to CoinGecko.
This incident comes after a slow start for Polygon zkEVM following its mainnet beta launch in March 2023, with lower throughput and total value locked (TVL) compared to rival zero-knowledge rollups, alongside high transaction fees.
Polygon zkEVM achieved its highest daily throughput in August, processing 1.41 transactions per second (TPS) over 24 hours, ranking it 23rd among 35 Layer 2 networks listed by L2Beat. In contrast, zkSync Era, a leading zero-knowledge rollup, topped the list with 62 TPS.
Despite its lower throughput, Polygon zkEVM’s transaction fees consistently surpassed those of zkSync Era, Starknet, and Linea throughout March.
Transaction fees on Polygon zkEVM have not decreased in line with other L2 solutions following the Ethereum Dencun hard fork two weeks ago, as Polygon chains do not yet support EIP-4844. Support for EIP-4844 is expected to be rolled out next month.
The growth of Polygon zkEVM’s network TVL has also been relatively slow, potentially due to the absence of a potential airdrop for early adopters. Currently ranking 14th, the network hosts $157 million worth of assets, while Starknet, zkSync Era, and Linea rank higher.
In June, Polygon announced plans to merge its zkEVM and PoS sidechain networks, with the latter currently hosting $1.18 billion within its DeFi ecosystem, as reported by DeFiLlama.
