Polygon adds another feather to their Ethereum scaling solutions
Polygon introduced Miden VM, a zk STARK-based EVM compatible rollup solution as part of its scaling infrastructure.
ZK Rollups are becoming prominent narratives in decentralized ecosystems. A promising entrant in this arena would be Polygon Miden. Scaling Ethereum requires powerful solutions and Polygon is aiming to deliver that with its latest launch.
Here's what they're offering.
Polygon and ZK
Polygon recently pivoted to provide ZK rollup solutions & allocated $1B funds to ZK based projects. This polymorphic approach was highly welcomed by the community. Zero Knowledge (ZK) Rollups are making their mark in this arms race to scale Ethereum.
Their first foray in ZK was the recently announced acquisition of Hermez Network (now Polygon Hermez). They later launched Polygon Nightfall, a privacy-focused rollup built in collaboration with Ernst & Young. Polygon Miden is their latest addition developed by former Facebook's lead ZK researcher Bobbin Threadbare.
So what exactly is Miden?
Although ZK Rollups offer promising features in Ethereum scaling, it's hard for them to support arbitrary logic & transactions, including those of the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Polygon Miden aims to solve this by using Miden VM, a STARK-based virtual machine written in Rust.
Apart from supporting arbitrary logic & transactions it also automatically generates a STARK-based proof of execution. This proof can then be used by anyone to verify that a program was executed correctly without the need for re-executing the program.
Multi-Language support
Miden having its own VM will allow it to extend usage to wider array of developer languages such as Solidity, Move. This approach allows us to keep the VM flexible enough to be a compilation target of other higher-level languages.
STARKs
Proofs of execution generated by Miden VM are based on STARKs. ZK-STARKs are a way to compress the information necessary for transactions by enabling just one party to verify a transaction in a trustless capacity prior to sending. They are also much more secure for transactions.
Development status
Polygon Released 0.1 version of Miden VM, an early prototype targeted toward developers. In future, this VM would be expanded into a production-grade ZK virtual machine that can execute any transaction and program, including those currently living on Ethereum.
Miden VM itself evolves from Distaff VM, the first practical STARK-based virtual machine. Miden VM improves on Distaff by replacing the underlying proving system with Winterfell, a highly-performant STARK prover developed at Facebook’s Novi.
Privacy
Privacy has been embedded into the core design of Miden VM, for eg - Programs in Miden VM are represented using MAST (Merkelized Abstract Syntax Trees) which makes it possible to selectively reveal parts of a program while keeping the rest of the program private (hashed).
Polygon’s vision
Polygon Miden will be integrated into the wider Polygon ecosystem, alongside existing Polygon solutions: Polygon PoS, Polygon SDK, Polygon Avail, Polygon Nightfall, and Polygon Hermez.
Conclusion
Ethereum’s brightest minds have converged on ZK protocols and have been adding to the blockchain infrastructure which itself is in the early phases of development.
Polygon have been actively pushing ahead with their scaling efforts. With the recent launch of Miden, they could be actually moving closer to become, in their words, an “aggregator of scalable solutions”.
Endnote
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