On Wednesday, Nov 8, 2023, at the NEARCON conference held in Lisbon, Near Protocol and Polygon Labs announced their strategic alliance. The collaboration is focused on the development of a zkWasm prover, a tool designed to bridge Wasm chains and Ethereum. The partnership was initially revealed by Polygon's founder Sandeep Nailwal, who emphasized the Near Foundation's role as a core contributor to Polygon Labs' CDK.
The joint venture, zkWASM, is a zero-knowledge prover for WASM blockchains. Its development aims to bolster the security of the Web3 ecosystem while bringing the Near Protocol closer to Ethereum and allowing Wasm chains to tap into Ethereum liquidity. An under-construction interoperability layer will facilitate shared liquidity within a unified ecosystem of CDK-deployed chains, promising access among alternative layer-1s, EVM layer-2s, and WASM chains.
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal underscored the importance of the zkWASM prover in maximizing developer customizability. Developers can opt from multiple provers when building with CDK, whether launching or migrating an EVM chain or constructing a WASM chain for deeper Ethereum alignment and liquidity access. The zkWASM prover will streamline tasks for NEAR validators by generating a single zero-knowledge proof instead of validating a shard, thus enhancing the scalability and decentralization of the NEAR Protocol.
NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin expressed excitement about partnering with Polygon Labs to extend zero-knowledge proofs' benefits across all of Web3. The initiative aims to expand the ZK technology landscape and defragment liquidity across chains while amplifying NEAR L1's scalability and decentralization through the zkWASM prover. The zkWASM prover is currently under active development and is expected to launch next year.
Despite these advancements, market trends suggest potential fluctuations in NEAR's value. The NEAR/USD 1-day chart indicates a potential rebound due to broader market bullishness. However, a failure could lead to a downward target of $1.17. This comes after an attempted breach at $1.63 and the RSI indicating a trend change.
Based in Switzerland, the NEAR Foundation is committed to fostering community-driven innovation globally through its decentralized blockchain platform. In contrast, Polygon Labs focuses on developing Ethereum scaling solutions for Polygon protocols, providing developers access to a suite of major scaling solutions.
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