It is just days before the rival Polygon system’s planned launch of its own zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine on Monday that zkSync Era takes the next step of opening its doors to general users.

A race between Ethereum scaling platforms to develop the first “zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine” (zkEVM) culminated Friday with Matter Labs opening up its zkSync Era. The zkEVM is seen as a key advance in speeding up blockchain transactions and reducing costs.

zkSync Era, which was launched last month for developers, is now available to everyone.

ZK rollups, also called zero-knowledge proofs, are a blockchain scaling system based on cryptography. A zkEVM is a special type of ZK rollup compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine, a piece of software that executes smart contracts, so developers familiar with the ecosystem can design or reconfigure applications more easily.