For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Grace Torrellas, Polygon Labs’ VP of product and zkEVM product lead and co-founder and executive director of Blockchain for Humanity, at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco.

Blockchain for Humanity aims to use Bitcoin and blockchain technology to help social impact projects. 

Separately, Polygon Labs is focused on the Ethereum blockchain through its own scaling protocols to make the web3 ecosystem more “affordable, secure and sustainable.” The chain also aims to grow the zero-knowledge ethereum virtual machine (zkEVM) space. 

Breaking it down for you: zkEVM is just fancy jargon for scalable smart contracts that are compatible with Ethereum and supports a type of computation known as “zero-knowledge proofs,” that verify each transaction. 

Polygon Labs has over 2.9 billion total transactions since inception in 2017. The Polygon network works with web3 organizations like Aave, Uniswap and OpenSea as well as big name brands like Disney and Starbucks. 

We talked about her work at both Polygon and Blockchain for humanity and how humanitarian work can be advanced in the web3 space. 

We also discussed: 

• Scaling businesses with blockchain tech
• ‘Aha’ moments in web3 
• Opportunities in social impact 
• Polygon’s ecosystem growth 

Chain Reaction comes out every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.

Chain Reaction comes out every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.