Cardano’s Hoskinson lauds Polygon's zkEVM launch despite previous criticism of Ethereum

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Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson congratulated the Polygon (MATIC) community for launching its zero-knowledge Ethereum (ETH) Virtual Machine (zkEVM) beta on March 27.

Hoskinson said innovations like this are great for the crypto industry, quoting a tweet from Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal about Vitalik Buetrin’s landmark transaction on the network.

Polygon’s zkEVM

Polygon’s zkEVM is a blockchain network that would enable faster and cheaper transactions. The Zero Knowledge (ZK) rollup would allow several transactions to be batched off-chain and executed on Ethereum’s mainnet.

The scaling solution is widely considered the gold standard for Ethereum scaling, and one of its major proponents is Vitalik Buterin.

Fittingly, the first transaction on Polygon’s zkEVM mainnet beta was performed by Buterin — Nailwal described the gesture as “symbolic.”

The Ethereum co-founder set the gas fee for the transaction to 69,042 — a cheeky reference to the 69 and 420 meme numbers. He also added an on-chain message which reads:

“Millions of constraints for man, unconstrained scalability for mankind.”

Polygon said its zkEVM would be open-source so that other developers can study it and encourage further development.

Polygon warned that the zkEVM is still in the testing stage, adding that users should exercise caution when using the network.

Hoskinson’s history with Ethereum

This is one of the few times that Hoskinson has spoken positively about something related to Ethereum — having criticized ETH and its community on several occasions previously.

Hoskinson once described Ethereum as the Hotel California of crypto. At the time, he referenced a tweet claiming that ETH staking withdrawals might be delayed beyond the Shanghai upgrade.

The Cardano founder also called Ethereum staking problematic because it looks “a lot like regulated product.” He added that its design could allow the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to combine all staking protocols.

Meanwhile, his Ethereum criticisms have come despite being one of the early contributors to the project.