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NEAR Foundation, the non-profit entity behind the NEAR Protocol, has announced a collaboration with Ethereum scaling solution Polygon Labs to improve interoperability across chains.
The strategic collaboration between NEAR Protocol and Polygon Labs will see the building of a zkWASM, a zero-knowledge prover for WASM blockchains.
The NEAR Foundation-Polygon Labs Partnership
The collaboration between the NEAR Foundation and Polygon Labs brings NEAR Protocol a step closer to one of the largest blockchain networks in Ethereum and also enables blockchains with WASM (WebAssembly) technology to use Ethereum’s liquidity, as stated by the press release. The partnership will look to build zkWASM, a zero-knowledge prover for WebAssembly (WASM) blockchains. zkWASM will help maximize developer customizability, enabling users to select from several provers when building.
“NEAR Foundation, the non-profit that supports the growth and development of the NEAR ecosystem, and Polygon Labs, a software development company for leading Ethereum Layer 2 scaling architecture, announce a strategic collaboration to build zkWASM, a zero-knowledge (ZK) prover for WASM blockchains. With Polygon Labs’ authority in ZK scaling technology and NEAR’s deep WASM runtime expertise, the zkWASM prover is positioned to lead the market among other WASM provers when it launches next year.”
According to the press release, the collaboration will bring together two leading protocol teams to create a secure, interoperable Web3 ecosystem. In the future, thanks to an in-development interoperability layer, chains will also be able to access shared liquidity in a unified ecosystem of CDK-deployed chains. This would include alternative Layer-1s, EVM Layer-2s, and WASM chains.
Thanks to the zkWASM prover, WASM chains will be able to settle transactions efficiently and cost-effectively while guaranteeing maximum security.
Greater Efficiency For Validators On NEAR
According to the press release, The partnership will bring greater efficiency for validators on NEAR, as they will no longer have to do the hard work that goes into validating a shard. Instead, validators can create a zero-knowledge proof, which would help simplify the validation process and improve scalability. Zero-knowledge technology has been tipped as the next hot trend for the digital asset space. It removes the need for individuals to provide their personal information to websites and applications routinely.
Speaking about the collaboration with the NEAR Foundation, Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon Labs, stated,
“We are proud to collaborate with NEAR on this exciting research initiative to further drive the development and adoption of ZK technology. The zkWASM prover maximizes developer customizability, which means projects will be able to select from a number of provers when building with Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK), whether that’s launching or migrating an EVM chain or building a WASM chain for closer Ethereum alignment and access to liquidity.”
Illia Polosukhin, the co-founder of NEAR Protocol, spoke about her excitement about working with Polygon Labs,
“We are very excited to work with Polygon Labs to bring all the benefits of zero-knowledge proofs not just to NEAR but all of Web3. NEAR is integrating more with Ethereum by innovating in new research frontiers, and the shared expertise of NEAR and Polygon will expand the ZK landscape and defragment liquidity across chains. Creating and using the zkWASM prover will also improve the scalability and decentralization of the NEAR L1.”
Near (NEAR) Price Analysis
Looking at the chart below, we can see that NEAR is currently trading around the $1.50 mark. The sentiment around the token is currently neutral, although the Fear & Greed Index is at 69, indicating Greed. The price is currently well above the 50-day SMA, which sits at $1.16, and the 200-day SMA, which is at $1.35. Looking at the price chart, we see that NEAR has seen a considerable drop since the 5th of November, when it was trading around the $1.66 mark.
The price registered a sharp drop, falling to $1.40 by the night of the 7th of November. However, support around the $1.39 level saw the price recover, pushing back above the $1.50 mark to its current level of $1.51. NEAR faces resistance at three key levels, with the first key resistance at $1.50. The second key resistance levels are at $1.52 and $1.56 respectively. If the price is able to move past these levels, we could see NEAR test $1.60 again.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
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