Crypto Quill

The NEAR Foundation and Polygon Labs have announced a technical integration that will benefit developers and users of Ethereum rollups. The integration will enable Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK) users to leverage NEAR Data Availability (NEAR DA), a highly scalable and efficient data availability layer that simplifies and reduces the cost of publishing data on Ethereum.

What is NEAR Data Availability and Why is it Important?

NEAR Data Availability (NEAR DA) is a modular solution that provides rollup builders with a reliable and cost-effective way to store and access data on the NEAR blockchain. Data availability is a crucial component of rollup networks, as it ensures that users can verify the validity of transactions and state transitions without relying on centralized operators or validators.

However, data availability also comes with a trade-off: the more data that is published on Ethereum, the higher the gas fees and the lower the scalability. This is especially problematic at a time when Ethereum gas prices are at record highs, making data publishing prohibitively expensive for many applications.

NEAR DA solves this problem by allowing rollup builders to use the NEAR blockchain as a data availability layer, while maintaining the security and compatibility of Ethereum. By doing so, NEAR DA offers several advantages, such as:

• Cost reduction: NEAR DA reduces the cost of data availability by orders of magnitude, as NEAR has much lower fees and higher throughput than Ethereum. For example, publishing 231 kB of data on NEAR costs only $0.01, compared to $115 on Ethereum.
• Speed improvement: NEAR DA enables faster data availability, as NEAR has shorter block times and finality than Ethereum. This means that users can access and verify data more quickly, improving the user experience and reducing the risk of fraud.
• Scalability enhancement: NEAR DA increases the scalability of rollups, as NEAR has a sharded architecture that allows for parallel processing of data. This means that NEAR DA can handle more data and more rollups without compromising performance or security.

How Does Polygon CDK Benefit from NEAR DA Integration?

Polygon CDK is a framework that allows developers to create customized Layer 2 chains using zero-knowledge (ZK) technology. ZK rollups are a type of rollup that use cryptographic proofs to verify transactions and state transitions, without revealing the underlying data. This makes ZK rollups highly secure, efficient, and compatible with Ethereum.

However, ZK rollups still require data availability to ensure that users can access and verify the proofs. This is where NEAR DA comes in handy, as it provides Polygon CDK users with a ready-made and easy-to-use data availability solution that integrates seamlessly with Ethereum.

By integrating NEAR DA with Polygon CDK, developers can enjoy the following benefits:

• Simplicity: NEAR DA is a complete, out-of-the-box data availability solution that does not require any additional development or maintenance. Developers can simply plug NEAR DA into their Polygon CDK chains and enjoy the benefits of data availability without any hassle.
• Flexibility: NEAR DA is a modular solution that can be customized and configured according to the needs and preferences of developers. Developers can choose how much data to publish, how to encode and compress data, and how to optimize data availability for their specific use cases.
• Compatibility: NEAR DA is fully compatible with Ethereum and Polygon CDK, as it uses the same data formats and standards. This means that developers can use NEAR DA without changing their existing code or tools, and users can access and verify data using the same interfaces and wallets.

What are the Future Plans and Opportunities for NEAR and Polygon Collaboration?

The integration of NEAR DA with Polygon CDK is not the only collaboration between the NEAR Foundation and Polygon Labs. The two teams are also working together on joint research projects, focusing on the development of zkWASM technology.

zkWASM is a technology that enables interoperability between the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and WebAssembly (WASM) ecosystems. WASM is a low-level, portable, and efficient bytecode format that can run on any platform. zkWASM combines WASM with zero-knowledge proofs, allowing developers to create ZK rollups that can run any EVM-compatible smart contract.

The collaboration between NEAR and Polygon aims to create a zkWASM compiler that can generate ZK proofs for any EVM smart contract, and a zkWASM chain that can run on NEAR DA. This will open up new possibilities for developers to create their own ZK rollups with custom logic and functionality, while benefiting from the scalability and efficiency of NEAR DA.

Illia Polosukhin, Co-Founder of NEAR Protocol, expressed his excitement about the collaboration, saying:

“We’re excited to make NEAR DA available to Polygon CDK rollup builders and share the benefits of cost-effective, lightning-fast data availability that scales with NEAR’s sharding for the modular Ethereum ecosystem. This is another exciting collaboration between NEAR Foundation and Polygon Labs to drive Chain Abstraction and create better experiences for developers and users.”

The integration of NEAR DA with Polygon CDK is expected to launch in Q1 2024, and will be available for all Polygon CDK users. The NEAR Foundation and Polygon Labs invite developers to join their communities and explore the opportunities and benefits of their collaboration.