With the addition of Polygon, the popular ETH scaling solution, Mina Protocol’s privacy-preserving technology will now be supported.
Earlier this week, Polygon, a well-known scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain, and the Mina Protocol, a lightweight smart contracts platform, revealed a bridge that will connect the two technologies.
The Mina Protocol, which is billed as the “world’s smallest blockchain,” is only a few kilobytes in size, compared to Ethereum’s 300-gigabyte blockchain, according to its developers.
Thus, syncing the Mina network becomes far simpler for the typical user; instead of requiring expensive gear, you may run a fully functional Mina node from your smartphone instead of using a computer.
It is able to condense its network to this size because it makes use of zero-knowledge proofs, which are a type of cryptography that is focused on anonymity.
As a result of today’s partnership, developers will be able to create applications on Polygon that are based on Mina’s recursive zk-SNARK-enabled applications, sometimes known as “Snapps.”
In layman’s terms, zero-knowledge proofs allow these types of applications to keep certain aspects hidden from other parties by employing cryptographic techniques that require no prior knowledge of the system.
Snapps might hide the identity of the person who owns the most costly non-fungible token (NFT) on Polygon, rather than being able to immediately identify who owns the most expensive NFT on Polygon.
The same may be said for sensitive KYC information; a crypto protocol that requires these details could employ a Snapp to confirm the identity of a user without disclosing sensitive information such as a passport number or birthdate.
Essentially, developers will now be able to integrate privacy protections into any application that they create on Polygon in order to protect their users’ data.
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal stated, “Creating a bridge between Polygon and Mina is an important step towards realizing our shared vision of a fully decentralized ecosystem of decentralized applications that puts users in control of their data.”
Polygon has decided to go private
Polygon’s commitment to enhancing scalability through the use of privacy-preserving technology will be strengthened as a result of the partnership. Scalability project bought Hermez, a scalability solution that makes use of zero-knowledge rollups, for a total of 250 million MATIC tokens in August of this year.
1/14 It is a big day for @0xPolygon! We are announcing a strategic focus on ZK-based scaling solutions and $1B in funding for this effort. As our first big foray into the exciting world of ZK, we are excited to announce the merger/acquisition of @hermez_network! 🔥 Thread.. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/ayEjUEpSK6
— Polygon | $MATIC (@0xPolygon) August 13, 2021As of the time of publication, both native tokens of each project are on the rise. The value of MATIC, Polygon’s token, has increased by approximately 5 percent in the last 24 hours. MINA has increased by about 30% over the same time period.
