Polygon Labs, the primary developer behind the Polygon blockchain ecosystem, has announced that it is deprecating support for Polygon Edge, a blockchain template that predates the project’s shift toward zero-knowledge cryptography as a core technology. This decision comes as Polygon Labs focuses its efforts on the new Polygon CDK, a framework for building layer-2 blockchains powered by zero-knowledge cryptography.
Polygon Edge, an open-source software for building Ethereum-compatible networks, was used as the template for Dogechain, a network that accepts Dogecoin’s DOGE to pay for transactions, known as gas fees. However, Dogechain was never officially endorsed by leaders of the Dogecoin project. Despite this, the developers of Dogechain chose to use Polygon Edge to bring DeFi capabilities to the Dogecoin community.
In a blog post, Polygon Labs explained that the support for chain development in the Polygon ecosystem has shifted towards the new Polygon CDK. Zero-knowledge cryptography, also known as “ZK,” has become a core feature of many new projects and upgrades in the crypto industry. Polygon Labs has been signaling this shift towards ZK since early this year, with the launch of Polygon zkEVM in March.
Several projects, including Immutable, Astar, Canto, Gnosis Pay, and Manta Network, have already committed to using Polygon CDK. The team is actively competing to secure the migration of the Celo blockchain to a layer 2 solution. Additionally, there are rumors of a new layer-2 network for the crypto exchange Kraken being developed using Polygon CDK.
Dogechain, which was created by developers claiming affiliation with the Dogecoin community, chose Polygon Edge as the template for their project. The goal was to add support for Ethereum-style smart contracts, enabling the development of DeFi protocols and NFTs. The original Dogecoin blockchain, which was a fork of Litecoin, lacked smart-contract support since it predates the introduction of Ethereum.
The Dogechain whitepaper, published in June 2022, mentions Polygon Edge multiple times as a modular and extensible framework for creating EVM-compatible blockchain networks. However, it is important to note that the Dogechain effort did not have the endorsement of top leaders in the Dogecoin community.
It remains unclear how the decision by Polygon Labs to discontinue contributions to Polygon Edge will impact the operations and roadmap of Dogechain. Requests for comment sent through the Dogechain website and its official Discord channel have not yet received a response. However, the blog post from Polygon Labs did mention that many projects building with Polygon Edge will likely migrate to Polygon CDK and have the option to eventually plug into the unified CDK ecosystem.
As the crypto industry continues to evolve, the adoption of zero-knowledge cryptography as a core technology is gaining momentum. Polygon Labs’ decision to focus on Polygon CDK represents their commitment to providing developers with the tools they need to build layer-2 blockchains powered by zero-knowledge cryptography.