On June 18, Jordi Baylina, co-founder of Polygon, announced the creation of Zisk, a new independent venture focused on advancing zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkVM) technology. This spinout follows Polygon Foundation’s decision to discontinue its costly zkEVM chain. Although Baylina retains the founder title, his team and codebase now operate fully independently under Zisk.

Baylina and the core zkEVM development team transitioned intellectual property and codebases from Polygon to SilentSig GmbH, a Swiss company owned by Baylina. Zisk was incubated within Polygon since May 2024 before becoming an independent entity on June 13.

Polygon’s shift and Zisk’s new direction

Polygon’s leadership change and roadmap update

The spinout coincides with a leadership change at Polygon, where co-founder Sandeep Nailwal took charge of the Polygon Foundation and introduced a new roadmap prioritizing Polygon PoS and the AggLayer interoperability protocol. This shift deprioritized the zkEVM project, which had incurred over $1 million in annual costs. Blockchain researcher Lorenz Lehmann described Polygon’s quiet abandonment of the zkEVM despite heavy investments.

Zisk’s focus: low-latency zkVM for practical applications

Rather than competing within Polygon’s new strategy, Baylina’s team opted to create Zisk to deliver on zkEVM’s original promise without legacy overhead. Unlike existing zkVMs emphasizing EVM compatibility, Zisk prioritizes low-latency proofs—essential for decentralized exchanges, gaming, and other real-time use cases. Early benchmarks indicate Zisk could cut verification times by 40–60%, pending independent audits.

Commitment to open source and innovation
Zisk inherits the open-source foundation of Polygon zkEVM, with Baylina committed to maintaining a permissionless codebase. This approach aims to foster community collaboration and accelerate the development of practical zero-knowledge technologies.