Ethereum scaling solution Polygon seeks to broaden its scaling and web 3.0 offerings with the recent acquisition of Zero-knowledge proof startup Mir.
Announcing the acquisition on December 9, the protocol said it has purchased the startup for 250 MATIC tokens, worth $400 million as per the conversion rate of $1.60 per coin at the time of the agreement.
Making the announcement at Polygon’s “zk day” virtual event, co-founder Mihailo Bjelic said in a statement:
“The industry is still in an early phase when it comes to scaling and blockchain infrastructure in general. One of the key missing components required to build highly scalable solutions has been performant recursive proof systems; they simply haven’t existed so far. This ends today.”
Popular smart contracts platform Ethereum has usability in NFTs and DeFi applications, resulting in problems such as delays in transaction processing and soaring gas fees. Polygon is one of the Layer 2 solutions that aim to solve this issue. It gained extreme popularity in 2021, with more than 120 million unique addresses and 3,000 decentralized applications as of November 31.
Polygon is currently pursuing a $1 billion expansion strategy, and the acquisition could help scale Ethereum, the company said in a statement.
Polygon acquired Hermez, a developer of zero-knowledge proof technology, for $ 250 million in August 2021. In September, the company partnered with Ernst & Young to build Polygon Nightfall, a zero-knowledge proof technology with enhanced privacy for large companies.
Mir is a startup that develops the world’s fastest zero-knowledge proof technology, enabling one small data validation to validate many transaction processes on Ethereum at once. Previously, it took time to generate zero-knowledge transactions, but Mir has developed a technology that generates recursive proofs at a high speed.
