Polygon’s Zero Knowledge Odyssey: Part 3
Polygon Miden: A side-quest to the world of ZK-Starks.
Note: The following article is a part of a 5-part series. Highly recommend reading the previous article before proceeding.
Now that we’ve explored the potentials of Polygon zkEVM, let’s take a detour to the waters of Polygon Miden, a STARK-based, EVM-compatible rollup with the same aspirations of building an EVM Equivalent zk solution.
Polygon Miden launched in late 2021. The project is led by Bobbin Threadbare, former Facebook’s core ZK researcher who led the development of Distaff VM and Winterfell, a stark based VM and prover respectively. These 2 projects are considered the building blocks of Polygon Miden.
Before we jump into the solution, let’s first understand the differences between the two zk-rollups, zk-STARKs and zk-SNARKs.
zk-STARKs and zk-SNARKs
zk-STARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Transparent Argument of Knowledge) and zk-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) are both zero-knowledge proof systems that allow one party (the prover) to prove to another party (the verifier) that a statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the validity of the statement itself.
The main difference between the two is the size and computational requirements of the proof. zk-STARKs are much more efficient in terms of proof size and verification time compared to zk-SNARKs, but they have much higher computational requirements for proving the statement. On the other hand, zk-SNARKs have smaller proof sizes and faster verification times but require a trusted setup for generating public parameters, which can be a potential security concern.
In summary, both zk-STARKs and zk-SNARKs offer privacy and efficiency benefits, but trade-offs must be made between proof size, verification time, and trust in the setup. Now, compared to Polygon zkEVM, which started out with zk-SNARKs, Polygon Miden focusses on zk-STARKs as its core underlying technology.
Polygon Miden Roadmap
Polygon Miden is currently under alpha stage, however in active development. It is currently on release v0.3 of the Miden VM.
Miden VM itself is an evolution of Distaff VM. Distaff has been in development since early 2020 and has gone through several iterations of development and user testing. Miden VM improves on Distaff by replacing the underlying proving system with Winterfell.
Architecture
Miden uses the Miden VM as the Layer 2 chain to generate a zk-STARK proof, of upto 5000 transactions which can be sent to it. This proof is sent to the L1 Ethereum Chain for closure and consensus.
The main goals of the design are:
- Parallel transaction execution where causally independent transactions can be processed in parallel. This is needed to achieve ultimate scalability.
- Support for composable smart contracts via safe but Turing-complete language. This is needed to support safer wallets, DeFi, DAOs, and many other cool use cases.
- Native support for multiple assets where the environment itself ensures asset safety, allows fee payments in multiple assets etc.
- Privacy which includes ability to engage in private transactions as well as have privacy-preserving smart contracts.
- Ethereum compatibility which includes ability to reuse Solidity smart contracts (with as few modifications as possible) on Polygon Miden.
Features
- Ethereum-level security provided by zk-STARKs
- Transparent (no trusted setup) and post-quantum secure
- High throughput of 1,000+ TPS before sharding and 10,000+ TPS after sharding
- Low transaction fees: over 100x lower than fees on Ethereum
- Arbitrary smart contracts written in Solidity and other languages
- Account abstractions and other features not yet available on Ethereum
- Decentralized and permissionless network
Conclusion
Polygon Miden is a promising solution which along with zkEVM aims to set a new path in terms of the potential of Zero Knowledge technology in the future. It has been working upon developing recursive approaches to its current zk-STARKs implementation, which would significantly increase the scalability of the solution in future.
Now that we’ve explored the two main frontiers of zk of Polygon, let’s take a look at Polygon Avail, a solution which only cares about your data. No, seriously!
References:
Polygon Miden: Polygon Miden — Polygon
Background material recommended by Polygon: Background Material | Polygon Wiki