On November 8th, Near Foundation announced a collaboration with Polygon Labs to develop a zero-knowledge (ZK) prover tool for blockchains using Web Assembly (WASM). zkWASM is expected to optimize the experience for developers, allowing teams to choose verification solutions when building projects.
Currently, zkWASM is still in development, with an expected completion date next year. However, with this new zkWASM mechanism, Near Protocol aims to get closer to one of the largest blockchain platforms in the market, Ethereum.
It’s worth noting that WASM is a binary instruction format for web browsers and is used by many blockchain networks as a computation tool instead of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). For example, NEAR, Stellar, Polkadot, and Internet Computer all prefer WASM over EVM.
“In the future, networks will be able to use a common liquidity pool in the standardized CDK ecosystem, including Layer-1, EVM Layer-2, and WASM networks. In addition, zkWASM is used to optimize the performance of validators on the NEAR network, reducing computation through zero-knowledge proofs, making the NEAR network more scalable and decentralized.”
In addition to the collaboration with Polygon Labs, Near Foundation also revealed its participation in the modular blockchain race alongside projects like Celestia and Avail through the deployment of the NEAR DA (Data Availability) solution.
According to Near Foundation, NEAR DA will support the data availability aspect of the network and provide safe and cost-effective data availability access for other rollups on Ethereum. The project claims that data transfer costs via NEAR DA are 8,000 times cheaper than Ethereum.
The first projects to use NEAR DA include Starknet’s Madara, Caldera, Fluent, Vistara, Dymension RollApps, and Movement Labs.