If you thought blockchain was all about revolution, pour yourself a glass of cider and settle in. Ol’ Jordi Baylina, whose full-time occupation seems to be ‘co-founder of things you can’t explain to your grandma,’ has lit out for fresh territory with his new venture, Zisk. This came hot on the heels of the Polygon Foundation pulling the plug on their almighty expensive chain faster than my cousin Earl pulls out of the driveway when bill collectors show up.
Baylina, still holding onto the “founder” badge like a trusty riverboat captain’s hat, now finds his trusty crew and their precious codebase floated off under their own flag – cut free from Polygon’s wallet-draining operation. Independence in blockchain land: it’s the new frontier, only with less horseback and more late nights staring at screens.
On June 18, without so much as a telegram, Baylina took to X (which in my day we called ‘the town square’), hollered to the world that he and his band of zkEVM tinkerers had set sail on their own ship, Zisk. Their mission? Deliver low-latency, open-source magic that only true believers and people with math degrees could love. 🧐
All the intellectual treasure — including chests of code written under Polygon’s banner — got shuffled off to a Swiss outfit going by SilentSig GmbH. Apparently, Jordi owns the whole thing, because when you want to move fast, you don’t share decision-making with distant cousins. Turns out the Zisk crew had been camped out inside Polygon since May 2024 before gussying up their own tent in mid-June.
The Zisk Gambit: Out With the Old, In With the Newfangled (and Cheaper) 🤔
Just a heartbeat before this spinout, Polygon’s own power shuffle saw Sandeep Nailwal take the Foundation wheel, change course quicker than a Mississippi steamboat dodging a sandbar. Zero-knowledge EVM? Thrown overboard. In its place: Polygon PoS and something high-falutin’ called AggLayer. (No relation to Aggie, my childhood goat.)
The upshot? A project torching over $1 million a year was shuttered quicker than you could say, “Wait, what do these people actually do?” Lorenz Lehmann, a blockchain researcher (which sounds almost honest), took a break from counting numbers to sum up Polygon’s misadventure:
Soon Polygon zkEVM will shut down. Quick recap:
>Polygon acquired Hermez for $250M in 2021
>Rebranded to Polygon zkEVM
>Development quietly abandoned
>Never upgraded to use Blobs, chain runs at 1M$+ loss/y
>Announce chain will shut down— Lorenz Lehmann (@LehmannLorenz) June 16, 2025
Baylina, no fool, saw which way the wind was blowing. Instead of paddling against the current, he loaded up his code and set out downriver. The new goal? Cut the dead weight from complex old gadgets, get back to the heart of the matter, and maybe — just maybe — finally deliver what zkEVM promised but couldn’t quite cough up (like Aunt Millie’s sourdough starter).
Most zkVMs are fixated on EVM compatibility as if that’s the ticket to prom, but Zisk figures it’s smarter to chase low-latency proofs — the sort of thing that makes decentralized exchanges and blockchain gaming move quicker than gossip in a small town. They say their new rig cuts verification times by 40–60%, but don’t take my word for it; we’ll wait for some straight-shootin’ audit folks to weigh in. 🎩
The story ain’t all new, though: Zisk packs along Polygon zkEVM’s open-source philosophy, with Baylina swearing left and right that folks can pitch in permissionless-style whenever they please. GitHub’s your huckleberry, if you dare.
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2025-06-18 21:17