Polygon zkEVM Processes 10M Transactions in February

Polygon zkEVM Hits 10 Million Monthly Transactions

Polygon zkEVM surpassed 10 million transactions during February 2026, the network's strongest month since its mainnet launch in March 2023. The milestone represents a 300% increase from the average monthly transaction count during Q4 2025, when the network processed approximately 2.5 million transactions per month. Daily transaction counts peaked at 485,000 on February 21.

The growth comes as zero-knowledge rollup technology matures and gains traction with both DeFi applications and enterprise users. Unlike optimistic rollups that dominate the Layer 2 market by TVL, ZK rollups like Polygon zkEVM use mathematical proofs to verify transaction validity, providing faster finality and stronger security guarantees.

Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal highlighted the milestone as evidence that ZK technology has moved beyond theoretical advantages to practical scalability. The network maintained average block times of 2 seconds and proof generation times under 10 minutes throughout the month, even at peak throughput.

Transaction Growth and Network Metrics

The decline in average transaction costs despite rising volume reflects ongoing improvements in proof generation efficiency and the benefits of Ethereum's Dencun upgrade, which reduced data availability costs for all Layer 2 networks. Polygon zkEVM's prover system has been upgraded three times since launch, with each iteration reducing the cost of generating ZK proofs.

Unique contract deployments tell a growth story beyond raw transaction numbers. The 4,200 unique contracts deployed in February suggest a healthy developer ecosystem building on the platform. Many of these deployments are DeFi protocols, gaming applications, and enterprise solutions migrating from the legacy Polygon PoS chain or deploying natively on zkEVM.

Polygon CDK Drives Enterprise Adoption

A significant driver of zkEVM growth is the Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK), which allows enterprises to deploy their own ZK-powered chains that settle on Ethereum through Polygon's infrastructure. Fourteen enterprise chains have launched using the CDK, spanning tokenized real estate, supply chain management, and institutional DeFi applications.

These CDK chains contribute to the broader Polygon ecosystem's transaction volume and TVL. When CDK chains batch their proofs through the shared zkEVM infrastructure, they benefit from Polygon's aggregated proof system, which amortizes verification costs across multiple chains. This shared security model reduces costs for individual chains while increasing the total throughput of the ecosystem.

Notable CDK adopters include a tokenized real estate platform processing property transactions across 12 countries, a major logistics firm tracking shipments on-chain, and a European bank piloting tokenized bond issuance. These enterprise use cases generate steady transaction volume that is less correlated with crypto market cycles than retail DeFi activity.

DeFi and Application Ecosystem

DeFi activity on Polygon zkEVM has matured significantly. Aave, Uniswap, and QuickSwap are the largest protocols by TVL, with combined deposits exceeding $1.4 billion. Lending activity has been particularly strong, with Aave's zkEVM deployment processing over $2 billion in monthly borrow volume during February.

The gaming sector has emerged as an unexpected growth driver. Several blockchain gaming studios have chosen Polygon zkEVM for its low transaction costs and fast confirmations, which are critical for in-game economies. Immutable's partnership with Polygon to power gaming chains has brought several titles with active player bases to the ecosystem.

NFT minting and trading activity also contributed to transaction volume. The low cost of minting on zkEVM, typically under $0.05 per NFT, has attracted creators and collectors priced out of Ethereum mainnet. A community art project that minted 500,000 NFTs in a single week in late February accounted for a notable portion of the month's transaction count.

ZK Rollup Competition Heats Up

Polygon zkEVM's growth occurs against a competitive backdrop. zkSync Era, developed by Matter Labs, leads all ZK rollups by TVL at $2.8 billion. Scroll, Linea, and StarkNet are also building significant user bases. The ZK rollup market is in an early stage where multiple architectures are competing for developer and user adoption.

Polygon zkEVM differentiates through its full EVM equivalence, meaning developers can deploy existing Ethereum smart contracts without modification. This lowers the migration barrier compared to StarkNet, which uses its own Cairo programming language. The tradeoff is that EVM-equivalent ZK proofs are computationally more expensive to generate than custom-designed ZK circuits.

The broader competition between ZK and optimistic rollups continues to evolve. While Arbitrum and Optimism maintain significant leads in TVL and user activity, ZK rollups are closing the gap. The eventual outcome may be a market where both approaches coexist, with ZK rollups favored for applications requiring fast finality and privacy, and optimistic rollups preferred for general-purpose DeFi where the 7-day challenge period is acceptable.

Road Ahead for Polygon zkEVM

Polygon Labs has outlined an ambitious roadmap for zkEVM through 2026. The upcoming Type 1 prover upgrade aims to achieve full Ethereum equivalence at the execution level, meaning zkEVM could theoretically prove Ethereum mainnet blocks. This would be a technical breakthrough with implications for Ethereum's own scaling roadmap.

Proof generation improvements are expected to reduce costs by another 50% while increasing throughput. The team is exploring recursive proof composition, which would allow multiple batches of transactions to be verified in a single proof, further reducing the per-transaction cost of ZK verification on Ethereum mainnet.

The integration with the broader Polygon 2.0 vision, which envisions an interconnected network of ZK-powered chains, represents the long-term strategic direction. The AggLayer, a unified bridge and proof aggregation system, is designed to make the multi-chain Polygon ecosystem feel like a single seamless network to users. If successful, this could position Polygon as the infrastructure layer connecting dozens of application-specific chains to Ethereum's security.