Polygon announced on December 9 that it has reached an agreement to acquire the Mir Protocol for $400 million. The transaction will involve 190 million MATIC tokens and $100 million in USDC stablecoins.
Mir is a zero-knowledge proof (ZK-proof) technology-based Ethereum scaling startup. A cryptographic instrument that can be used to produce ZK-rollups is a ZK-proof.
ZK is a cryptographic mechanism that allows data or computations to be verified without being revealed to a third party. In the previous year, several Layer 2 scaling solutions have added ZK capabilities to improve both speed and privacy.
The rising use of Layer-2 scaling solutions reflects users’ strong desire to solve scaling issues on the Ethereum network. ZK rollups are poised to become the next big thing in the crypto industry.
Transactions can be executed with ZK-rollups, however they do not require all transaction data to be uploaded to Ethereum. This minimizes gas expenses while also reducing the amount of block space utilized on Ethereum, allowing it to scale.
Mir Protocol, according to Polygon, has the quickest ZK-proof technology, which means it can generate proofs more quickly and validate more transactions in a single proof. According to Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic, the Mir team has spent a lot of effort inventing and optimizing their ZK-proof technology called Plonky2.
Polygon acquired Hermez Network for $250 million in August. Polygon was able to build an ecosystem of Ethereum-centric scaling solutions as a result of this, with ZK-rollups validating transactions faster, cutting gas rates, and enabling off-chain data storage among the ways the Layer-2 protocol is tackling Ethereum’s scaling issues.