Polygon, a popular Ethereum scaling solution, and Mina Protocol, a lightweight smart contracts platform, have announced a bridge to connect the two technologies. Polygon’s drive towards improving scalability through privacy-preserving technologies is bolstered by the collaboration.
The popular Ethereum scaling solution Polygon will now support Mina Protocol’s privacy-preserving technology.
Polygon and Mina Partnership
The Mina Protocol, perhaps the smallest blockchain on the planet is only a few kilobytes in size, compared to Ethereum’s 300-gigabyte blockchain. This means syncing with Mina is much simpler average users; instead of hefty hardware requirements, you can run a full Mina node from your smartphone.
It is able to condense its network to this size due to its use of zero-knowledge proofs, a type of privacy-focused cryptography.
Building with Snapps
With today’s collaboration, developers can now use Mina’s zk-SNARK-enabled applications, or “Snapps,” to build applications on Polygon. These types of applications can keep certain features hidden from different parties by using zero-knowledge proofs.
Snapps could conceal the identity of the owner of the most expensive non-fungible token (NFT) on Polygon, rather than revealing it quickly.
Similarly, a crypto protocol that requires sensitive KYC (Know Your Customer) information could use a Snapp to confirm key information. Essentially, developers will now be able to incorporate privacy features into any application built on Polygon.
“Building a bridge between Polygon and Mina is an important step toward realizing our shared vision of a fully decentralized ecosystem of dapps that puts users in control of their data,” said Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon’s co-founder.
Final thoughts
Polygon’s drive towards improving scalability through privacy-preserving technologies is bolstered by the collaboration. In August, the scalability project paid 250 million MATIC (Polygon used to be known as Matic) tokens for Hermez, a scalability solution that uses zero-knowledge rollups.
At the time of this article, both projects’ native tokens were on the rise. Polygon’s token, is up nearly 8% in the last 24 hours to $1.41. MINA is up nearly 30% over the same time period and currently trading at $5.35.
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Jay Speakman is a technology writer based in San Francisco, California. He writes on the topics of blockchain, cryptocurrency, DeFi and other disruptive technologies. Clients include Avalanche, Be[in]Crypto, Trust Machines and several blogs devoted to blockchain gaming. He will not rest until fiat currency is defeated.
