Polygon Labs and NEAR Foundation Collaborate to Build zkWasm Prover

• Polygon Labs and Near Foundation have partnered to build a zkWasm L2 prover.
• The collaboration will position the ZK solution at the forefront of the Web 3.0 virtual realm.
• The zkWASM prover is presently under “active development” and is poised to launch in 2024.

Polygon Labs and Near Foundation have recently announced their partnership to build a zero-knowledge prover for WASM (zkWASM) blockchains during the NEARCON in Lisbon. This integration will enable any WebAssembly chain to prove itself in the Ethereum ecosystem while benefiting from the security features of Layer 2.

In a recent post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Polygon Co-Founder Sandeep Nailwal emphasized the significance of this collaboration.

Nailwal highlighted the Near Mainnet’s ability to prove the entire state and performance to Ethereum, almost like a sovereign Validium.

According to PR Newswire, the partnership will position the ZK solution at the forefront of the Web 3.0 virtual realm. It will inevitably be one of three prototypes available for developers who construct with the Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK). CDK is an open-source codebase for launching ZK-powered Layer 2 custom-fitted chains for Ethereum.

NEAR Foundation’s new CEO, Illia Polosukhin, has also reportedly delivered a statement regarding the said union during the NEAR ecosystem’s annual flagship conference in Lisbon. Further, he shared his excitement about the collaboration on X:

I made 2 exciting announcements at #NEARCON23 today about how the @NEARProtocol ecosystem is increasing alignment with the modular Ethereum stack: a collaboration with @0xPolygonLabs to build zkWASM, a ZK prover for WASM chains to unify liquidity across Web3…

Additionally, NEAR Protocol posted on LinkedIn that the partnership will empower greater security, scalability, interoperability, and developer flexibility in the open web. The zkWASM prover is presently under development and will launch in 2024.