Near Foundation and Polygon Labs Partner to Build Zero-Knowledge 'Prover' for WASM Chains
Near Foundation, the organization supporting the development of the NEAR ecosystem, has partnered with Polygon Labs to “build a zero-knowledge (ZK) prover for Webassembly (WASM) blockchains or zkWASM for short.” According to a joint press release, the two entities’ zkWASM prover, which is set to be launched in 2024, is positioned “to lead the market among other wasm provers.” WASM chains using this prover, the settling of transactions will be more efficient and cost-effective with maximum security guarantees.
“We are proud to collaborate with NEAR on this exciting research initiative to further drive the development and adoption of ZK technology. The zkWASM prover maximizes developer customizability, which means projects will be able to select from a number of provers when building with CDK, whether that’s launching or migrating an EVM [Ethereum Virtual Machine] chain, or building a WASM chain for closer Ethereum alignment and access to liquidity.” As explained in the press release, the availability of a zkWASM prover means NEAR validators will significantly simplify validator requirements which in turn leads to “better scalability and increased decentralization for the NEAR Protocol.”
