Polygon zkEVM Beta: A Sequencer Issue and Its Potential Impact on MATIC Price

Polygon zkEVM Beta faces a sequencer issue

Polygon zkEVM beta version recently faced a hiccup. The team behind Polygon acknowledged this issue in a recent post, stating that the sequencer, a crucial component of the system, experienced problems due to a reorganization at layer one. This issue has led to some speculation about its potential impact on the price of MATIC, Polygon’s native token.

The Sequencer Issue

The sequencer is a key element in the operation of Polygon’s zkEVM. It’s responsible for organizing and combining transactions into batches before they’re relayed to the Polygon zkEVM smart contract on Ethereum’s main network. However, the sequencer encountered difficulties due to a layer one reorganization, causing the zkEVM mainnet beta to face an issue.

This problem affected the only rollup on the network, prompting immediate action from the Polygon blockchain team. It’s important to note that this incident exclusively impacts Polygon’s zkEVM, which is currently in a nearly complete prototype state. Other components of the Polygon ecosystem, like PoS and CDK, remain operational.

Community Reactions and Speculations

The crypto community has been buzzing about the ongoing downtime. While Polygon assures its users that it is actively working to resolve the issue, some users have been speculating about the silence surrounding the unexpected prolonged network downtime.

One user, known as 0xngmi, questioned their 101,900 followers, “why is nobody talking about how Polygon zkevm has been down for 10h and is still down?” Another user, Mirza.inj, pointed out to their 14,800 followers that “Polygon zkEVM was down for over 10 hours, and no one said anything.”

Comparisons with Solana

This incident comes only a month after the Solana network experienced a significant outage. On Feb. 6, it was reported that block production on the Solana network halted for over five hours before validators restarted the network. Since January 2022, Solana has seen around half a dozen significant outages.

The Launch of zkEVM

In March 2023, Polygon launched the zkEVM to its mainnet beta in an effort to allow developers to deploy smart contracts with increased finality and lower costs. After its release, it was reported that it mimics the transaction execution environment of Ethereum’s mainnet.

Polygon claimed that the open-source zkEVM allows decentralized applications to scale through transaction batching, unlocking higher performance. This development is a significant step forward in the evolution of blockchain technology, promising increased efficiency and scalability.

Conclusion

While the sequencer issue is a setback, the Polygon team is actively working on resolving it. They have reassured users that the problem is confined to the zkEVM and does not impact any other chain deployed using the Polygon chain development kit (CDK). As the crypto community watches closely, the question remains: will this incident impact the price of MATIC? Only time will tell.