Polygon co-founder spins off to launch independent zero-knowledge project ZisK

Polygon co-founder Jordi Baylina and the team behind Polygon’s zkEVM have transitioned into an independent venture dubbed Zisk, just as the foundation prepares to wind down the underused zero-knowledge EVM network.

ZisK will focus on a low-latency, open-source zkVM proving technology, Baylina said in a post on X. Blockchain provers are used to verify transactions or onchain data validity without revealing the underlying information. According to Zisk’s website, the project was incubated inside Polygon Labs from May 2024 until becoming standalone on June 13.

The move follows last week’s leadership shake-up, which saw Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal take over as CEO of the Polygon Foundation. Nailwal outlined plans to deprecate the zkEVM chain while pivoting resources to Polygon PoS and the Agglayer cross-chain aggregator.

Critics say the decision is overdue. In a separate X thread, researcher and founder of the student-run RWTH blockchain, Lorenz Lehmann, noted Polygon bought Hermez for $250 million in 2021, rebranded it as zkEVM, and then "quietly abandoned" development, leaving the network to rack up more than $1 million in annual losses.

As part of Zisk’s spin-off, all Polygon zkEVm intellectual property and its core team were transferred to SilentSig Switzerland GmbH, a company wholly owned by Baylina. He remains a co-founder of the Ethereum scaling solution and an advisor.