Polygon zkEVM bridge: the network is shut down — how funds are recovered

What happened

Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta was a separate network from Polygon PoS. Its sequencer was shut down on July 3, 2026. Since then the network produces no blocks, and withdrawals from it can no longer be processed through the Agglayer Bridge (Polygon). A bridge page or wallet screen that still offers Polygon zkEVM as a destination is offering a network that cannot receive anything.

Polygon PoS is a different network, and it is the one the Polygon routes on this site quote.

Funds in your own wallet: the Claims interface

If you held assets in a self-custodied wallet on Polygon zkEVM when it was shut down, Polygon says you can recover them on Ethereum through the Polygon zkEVM Claims interface. It is a separate web application that works without the stopped sequencer, using exit certificates and a public read-only RPC. Polygon Labs does not hold the funds at any point: you sign and submit your own claim transactions on Ethereum (Polygon). Like any transaction on Ethereum, a claim costs gas paid in ether (ethereum.org).

Polygon calls these holders EOAs — externally owned accounts, the kind controlled by whoever has the private key, as opposed to a contract account controlled by code (ethereum.org).

Open the Claims interface from the link on Polygon’s own zkEVM page, not from a search result or a message. Because you sign your own claim, there is no step in which anyone else needs your recovery phrase — whoever asks for it is not helping you recover anything (how wallet drainers work).

The deadline

The Claims interface stays available through December 31, 2027, and is retired after that. Polygon states that self-custodied assets remain recorded on Ethereum and are not forfeited to Polygon Labs when the interface is retired, but that it will no longer provide the interface or support for recovery, and that recovering by other means may not be practicable. Polygon recommends claiming well before the deadline (Polygon).

Funds inside contracts: not covered

Assets that were held inside smart contracts on Polygon zkEVM when it was shut down cannot be recovered through the Claims interface. Polygon names liquidity positions in DeFi protocols, assets in multisig wallets deployed on zkEVM, and assets locked in third-party bridge contracts there. For those, Polygon’s instruction is to contact the protocol or the operator of the contract directly; for questions about the Claims interface itself, its support site (Polygon).

A transfer that was in flight through a third-party bridge at the moment of shutdown falls into the same question: what happened to it depends on that bridge’s own contracts, and the bridge operator is the one who can say.