Polygon Labs shut down the zkEVM Mainnet Beta sequencer on July 1, 2026, leaving wallet balances with an Ethereum L1 claim path while assets still inside DeFi protocols have no automatic migration.
On-chain wallet balances were captured in an exit snapshot at shutdown. Those funds have been migrated to Ethereum L1 and are claimable at ui.agglayer.dev through December 31, 2027, after which they are considered abandoned.
Assets inside DeFi protocols, including liquidity positions, lending collateral and multisig wallets, cannot be auto-migrated. Polygon does not control the smart contracts running DeFi applications on the network, so users had to withdraw manually before the deadline.
Funds that remained locked in those contracts at shutdown are inaccessible unless the protocol team built or coordinated an exit path before July 1. QuickSwap/DragonFi warned LP holders roughly two weeks before the shutdown to exit all positions or face permanent loss.
The shutdown applies only to Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta. Polygon PoS and all other Polygon networks continue operating.
The deprecation was announced in June 2025, giving users roughly 12 months to exit. Polygon had acquired Hermez for $250 million in 2021 and rebranded it as zkEVM, but the chain never upgraded to Ethereum's blob transactions and was running more than $1 million in annual losses when the shutdown was announced. Polygon is now directing resources toward its AggLayer multi-chain aggregation strategy.
The closure follows the Ethereum Foundation's June 23 restructuring, which eliminated 54 staff and concentrated the organization around fewer priorities. Together, the moves mark wider consolidation in ZK-rollup investment onto fewer bets.