Polygon Adds Mir to Its ZK Scaling Arsenal for $400M
Polygon has purchased yet another ZK project to strengthen its scaling ecosystem.
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Polygon has added another zero-knowledge scaling project called Mir. The team hopes to leverage Mir to add to its arsenal of scaling solutions.
Polygon Acquires Mir
Polygon has acquired a startup called Mir, which offers fast zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. The strategic acquisition will help expand Polygon’s scaling portfolio.
ZK is a cryptographic mechanism that can enable verification data or computation without revealing them to a third party. Several Layer 2 scaling solutions have integrated ZK features to enhance both speed and privacy in the last year.
Polygon is one of the top scaling projects on Ethereum, consisting of its flagship Proof-of-Stake sidechain and Layer 2 solutions. Its chain hosts some of the biggest decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum, including OpenSea, Aave, SushiSwap, Curve, Balancer, and others.
According to a Thursday press release, Polygon signed a deal to acquire Mir in exchange for $400 million paid in MATIC tokens. The purchase was made from Polygon’s $1 billion treasury fund dedicated to acquiring ZK-based projects.
This is Polygon’s third ZK-related acquisition. The team acquired Hermez, an EVM-compatible ZK-rollup service, for $200 million in August. That deal was followed by the acquisition of Miden, a ZK- STARK rollup, in the month of November.
In a virtual event called “ZK day,” Polygon’s co-founders announced that the team considered ZK cryptography to be “the most promising solution for scaling Ethereum.”
Mir uses a scaling solution that leverages cryptographic proofs known as ZK-SNARKs. It is based on plonky2, a recursive proof protocol compatible with Ethereum. ZK-SNARKs have also been deployed by Mina Protocol, a scalable blockchain with a fixed size of around 22 KB.
According to Polygon, Mir is currently one of the fastest ZK-based scaling solutions in the market. The team stressed that generating ZK proofs on a machine is generally slow and inefficient. However, Mir’s scaling technology can help natively run ZK proofs on a machine such as a laptop within 170 milliseconds. The team now hopes to leverage this and build an Ethereum solution under Polygon Zero.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the owner of this piece owned MATIC and several other cryptocurrencies.
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