The co-founder of Polygon and its zkEVM team have spun off to establish the independent zero-knowledge project ZisK.

Gate News bot news, Polygon co-founder Jordi Baylina and his zkEVM team have transitioned to an independent company called Zisk, while the foundation is preparing to gradually phase out the underutilized zero-knowledge EVM network.

Baylina stated in an article on X that ZisK will focus on low-latency, open-source zkEVM proof technology. Blockchain provers are used to verify the validity of transactions or on-chain data without revealing underlying information. According to information on Zisk's website, the project was incubated internally at Polygon Labs in May 2024 and officially became independent on June 13.

Previously, the Polygon Foundation underwent a leadership change, with co-founder Sandeep Nailwal taking over as CEO of the Polygon Foundation. Nailwal outlined plans to abandon the zkEVM chain, while reallocating resources towards Polygon PoS and the Agglayer cross-chain aggregator.

Critics believe that this decision should have been made long ago. In another X post, Lorenz Lehmann, a researcher and founder of the blockchain at RWTH Aachen University (, pointed out that Polygon acquired Hermez for $250 million in 2021 and renamed it zkEVM, then "quietly abandoned" development, resulting in the network losing over $1 million each year.

Source: The Block