Polygon co-founder Jordi Baylina has announced the spinout of a new independent project named Zisk, focused on advancing zero-knowledge virtual machine (zkEVM) technology originally developed within Polygon. This move follows the Polygon Foundation's decision to decommission the Polygon zkEVM chain after a costly development process.
Baylina retains his founder role at Zisk, now fully independent under SilentSig GmbH, a Swiss entity he owns. The Zisk team includes the core zkEVM developers who incubated the project within Polygon since May 2024 and formally launched it as a separate entity in mid-June 2025.
Polygon’s leadership recently shifted, with co-founder Sandeep Nailwal becoming the CEO of the Polygon Foundation and refocusing the roadmap away from zero-knowledge EVM technology toward Polygon PoS and its AggLayer interoperability protocol. As a result, Polygon zkEVM development was quietly abandoned despite significant prior investment.
Zisk aims to improve upon previous zkEVM efforts by prioritizing low-latency, open-source zero-knowledge proofs for real-world applications such as decentralized exchanges and gaming. Early benchmarks suggest potential verification time reductions of 40–60%, although independent audits are pending.
The project inherits Polygon zkEVM’s open-source legacy, with Baylina ensuring the Zisk codebase remains permissionless. This spinout represents a strategic pivot to preserve and advance the core ambitions of zkEVM technology outside of Polygon’s current ecosystem.