Polygon zkEVM Team Launches Zisk Amid Polygon Labs Shutdown

The Polygon zkEVM team, led by co-founder Jordi Baylina, has announced its departure from Polygon Labs to launch an independent company named Zisk. This move comes as the Polygon Foundation plans to shut down the zkEVM chain due to low usage and high operational costs. The new startup, Zisk, will focus on developing a new zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM), a tool designed to verify blockchain data without revealing the actual details, thereby enhancing transaction privacy and improving the speed and security of blockchain operations. Zisk will be open-source and have low latency, making it more accessible for developers to build on the platform. All zkEVM-related tools and assets have been transferred to SilentSig Switzerland GmbH, a company wholly owned by Baylina.

The restructuring at Polygon follows the appointment of co-founder Sandeep Nailwal as the new CEO. Nailwal has announced that the foundation will shift its focus towards improving Polygon PoS and developing Agglayer, a new tool aimed at connecting different blockchains. This strategic pivot has garnered attention within the blockchain community, with many members expressing that this decision was overdue. The zkEVM project, originally known as Hermez, was acquired by Polygon for $250 million in 2021 but saw limited development and incurred significant annual losses, contributing to the decision to shut it down.

Despite the launch of Zisk, Jordi Baylina will continue to contribute to the Polygon ecosystem as a co-founder and advisor. The former zkEVM team, now part of Zisk, is dedicated to advancing zero-knowledge technologies outside of Polygon’s direct structure. Their focus will be on improving zero-knowledge tools and helping blockchains grow more securely and privately. This move is part of a broader trend in the crypto world, where top leaders and expert teams are leaving large, well-known projects to start their own companies. The increasing popularity of decentralized finance (DeFi) and Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has driven demand for high-speed, low-cost, and scalable blockchain solutions.