Polygon adds ZK pioneer Mir in $400m deal to advance ETH scaling

Polygon has announced a $400m deal with pioneering Zero-Knowledge (ZK) start-up Mir as part of the next step in scaling Ethereum and bringing millions of users to Web3.

Zero-knowledge proofs are a promising scaling solution because they allow many Ethereum transactions to be verified with a single tiny proof.

Until now, generating ZK proofs has been slow and inefficient, but Mir has solved this problem by generating recursive proofs even faster.

While Ethereum has the potential to be the most widely used blockchain for Web3 applications, it is currently being held back by scalability challenges which, in turn, lead to high transaction fees.

Mihailo Bjelic, co-founder of Polygon (pictured) said: “The industry is still in an early phase when it comes to scaling and blockchain infrastructure in general.

“One of the key missing components required to build highly scalable solutions has been performant recursive proof systems; they simply haven’t existed so far.

“This ends today as we are introducing a recursive proof system that is orders of magnitude faster than anything else and is practical to verify on Ethereum. This is a huge win for the entire industry.”

The acquisition of Mir is a key component in the company’s $1 billion strategy for Ethereum scaling that follows the recently announced merger of Hermez Network (now Polygon Hermez), the development of Polygon Nightfall, a privacy-focused rollup built in collaboration with EY, and Polygon Miden – a STARK-based, EVM-compatible ZK rollup scaling solution.

Brendan Farmer, co-founder of Mir hailed the partnership as a great opportunity to work toward scaling Ethereum.

“Polygon is one of the most dedicated and successful teams in the space, and we’ve been impressed by their commitment to ZK as a scaling solution for Ethereum,” he said.

“We’re very excited to dedicate our world-class team and the technology that we’ve developed toward achieving this vision.”