Will Polygon zkEVM’s latest update help network activity? 

Journalist

Posted: February 15, 2024

• Polygon zkEVM’s Etrog upgrade included support for additional pre-compiled smart contracts.
• MATIC’s price surged by over 11% in the last seven days. 

Polygon [MATIC] zkEVM did not have a comfortable last week as its network activity plummeted.

However, the blockchain has announced that a new update went live for zkEVM, which might have a positive impact on the L2’s performance in coming days. 

Polygon zkEVM’s new update

AMBCrypto’s look at Artemis’ data revealed that the L2’s performance was declining over the last few days in terms of network activity. zkEVM’s daily active addresses dropped sharply last week.

As a result, the L2’s Daily Transactions declined, suggesting less usage of the network. 

Source: Artemis

Things in terms of captured value also did not look pretty good for Polygon zkEVM, as its fees and revenue fell last week.

Nonetheless, Polygon zkEVM did perform well in the DeFi space, as its TVL registered an uptick over the past few days.

Source: Artemis

Though the L2’s network activity dropped, it has a trick up its sleeve that can help turn the situation around.

Polygon recently posted a tweet mentioning that zkEVM’s latest ETRGO upgrade was live on the mainnet, following the 10-day timelock for upgrading the network. 

Following the 10-day timelock, the latest upgrade to Polygon zkEVM is now live on mainnet. The Etrog upgrade brings support for four additional precompiled smart contracts—a major step towards becoming a full Type 2 ZK-EVM.

End users don’t need to take any action—everything will… pic.twitter.com/qeMvECS5as

— Polygon Foundation (@0xPolygonFdn) February 13, 2024

As per the official blog, the Etrog upgrade includes support for additional pre-compiled smart contracts and a new way of processing transactions.

To be precise, the update has added support for ecAdd, ecMul, ecPairing, Sha256, and modexp.

Since the new update brings new support and features, it can help increase network activity and capture value. How soon this affects zkEVM’s key stats will be interesting to watch. 

MATIC turns bullish

While Polygon zkEVM released its new update, MATIC’s price action turned bullish. According to CoinMarketCap, MATIC was up by more than 11% in the last 24 hours.

In fact, despite the bearish market condition, MATIC’s daily chart remained green. At the time of writing, MATIC was trading at $0.8869 with a market capitalization of over $8.5 billion. 

Read Polygon’s [MATIC] Price Prediction 2024-25

The token’s social volume remained high last week, reflecting its popularity in the crypto space. However, bearish sentiment around MATIC remained dominant, as evidenced by its Weighted Sentiment. 

Source: Santiment