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Canto, Astar blockchains plan migration to Ethereum ecoystem as layer 2s

September 19, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Astar

By inheriting Ethereum’s security, Canto will be more decentralized and will enable trustless guarantees when bridging assets over, Polygon Labs said.

Cosmos-native layer-1 blockchain Canto has become the latest chain to migrate to Ethereum as a layer 2 zero-knowledge rollup, after another layer-1 blockchain, Astar, announced similar plans moving from the Polkadot ecosystem to Ethereum.

Canto is a permissionless general-purpose blockchain, which is Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible with aims to onboard the traditional financial sector to decentralized finance applications.

Upon an official agreement reached by Canto Commons — a framework where contributors coordinate ideas and solutions to the protocol — its core developers will build a ZK rollup on Ethereum’s second layer, Polygon Labs explained on Sept. 18:

“By leveraging a shared ZK bridge, Canto will eventually tap the liquidity of a unified Polygon ecosystem with easy access to Ethereum.”

Polygon Labs said Canto will “inherit” Ethereum’s security, enabling more decentralization and trustless guarantees when bridging assets over:

“User security comes by way of a best-in-class and in-production ZK prover, meaning community security is ensured by cryptography and inherited from Ethereum, rather than the social-economic incentives of fraud proofs.”

Neofinance at scale - Canto is migrating to a ZK-powered Ethereum L2, built with @0xPolygon CDK.

The @CantoPublic community will tap Ethereum’s deep liquidity via a shared ZK bridge without sacrificing user security – a big stride toward neofinance.https://t.co/8uDhLYk1G9
— Polygon (Labs) (@0xPolygonLabs) September 18, 2023

There will be no changes to Canto’s validators or staking system, Polygon Labs added.

Canto follows moves from Astar

Canto joins the likes of Astar, Gnosis Pay, Palm and IDEX to have announced plans to build ZK layer 2s using Polygon’s Chain Development Kit in recent months, according to Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

On Sept. 13, the Astar team announced it will soon begin building its own Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, named Astar ZK-Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), also using Polygon’s CDK.

“We are building a trustless bridge to Ethereum with high EVM equivalency right out-of-the-box, so dApp developers can use existing tools to build solutions across our entire ecosystem,” the Astar team explained in a Sept. 14 statement.

I’m excited to welcome @AstarNetwork, the leading @Polkadot chain to Ethereum. They are going to launch a zkEVM chain using @0xPolygon CDK, an Ethereum L2 secured by ZK!@AstarNetwork is the leading blockchain of Japan. After launch, it quickly became among the most notable… pic.twitter.com/0SgYE6ENet
— Sandeep Nailwal | sandeep. polygon (@sandeepnailwal) September 13, 2023

Polygon Labs hopes the ZK-powered chain will enable businesses to implement Web3 solutions with increased speed, scalability, and security in Japan — where Astar is based — and around the world.

Ryan Sean Adams, co-host of Ethereum show Bankless said the two most recent migrations to Ethereum could be the start of a rollup avalanche.

The largest chain from polkadot just moved to Ethereum. (Astar)

The largest public commons chain from Cosmos just became a Polygon Validium. (Canto)

And...I hear the world's first Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) L2 is dropping tomorrow.

Ethereum rollups are eating the world.
— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS - rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) September 18, 2023

Not every protocol is sticking around on Ethereum

Meanwhile, some protocols appear to moving the other way.

Decentralized exchange dYdX announced its intention to build a “purely decentralized” order book exchange on Cosmos as part of a plan to migrate away from Ethereum in early September.

Another Ethereum-native protocol, Maker, signaled plans to move to cut ties with Ethereum and build a new, more “efficient” chain with Solana’s codebase in September too.

Maker’s co-founder Rune Chistensen added Solana currently stands as the “most promising” ecosystem to explore as it proved its resilience during the FTX debacle and has a high-quality pool of talent developers building on Solana.

The last phase of Endgame is the launch of a native blockchain for Maker with the codename NewChain

It will make the ecosystem more secure and efficient

After some research, I believe the Solana codebase should be considered as the basis for NewChainhttps://t.co/KyGxBBGlVH
— Rune (@RuneKek) September 1, 2023

Nonfungible token collection OnChainMonkey is also shifting its entire collection of 10,000 NFTs from Ethereum to Bitcoin. The team behind the protocol cited a more secure base layer and a thriving Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem as the main reason behind the migration plan.

Magazine: DeFi Dad, Hall of Flame: Ethereum is ‘woefully undervalued’ but growing more powerful

Polygon 2.0 — MATIC conversion to POL outlined in preliminary improvement proposals

September 14, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The Ethereum layer-2 developer has introduced the first improvement proposals to begin the transition to its Polygon 2.0 ecosystem.

Polygon Labs’ vision of an interconnected layer-2 Ethereum ecosystem powered by zero-knowledge cryptography begins in earnest following three inaugural improvement proposals that will begin the transition to Polygon 2.0.

The scaling technology firm unveiled Polygon 2.0 in June 2023, outlining plans for a scaling ecosystem made up of four protocol layers. The staking, interop, execution and proving layers all play a role in creating an interconnected ecosystem of chains that enable fast value transfer and information sharing.

1/ The wait is over. Polygon 2.0 implementation kicks off now with the release of 3 Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs), and a roadmap for Phase 0.https://t.co/gk7FW0zCpc pic.twitter.com/YJo3BtQy4y
— Polygon (Labs) (@0xPolygonLabs) September 14, 2023

Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal recently unpacked how the ecosystem aims to become the value layer of the internet by using zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to provide low-fee, high-throughput performance to the wider Ethereum ecosystem.

Polygon released three Polygon Improvement Proposals (PIPs) on Sept. 14 for community consideration and voting that are earmarked to begin taking place in the final quarter of 2023.

The PIPs outline technical details for “Phase 0” of the establishment of a network of interconnected ZK-powered layer-2 chains that scale Ethereum. This includes a proposal for the transition and specifications that will see MATIC (MATIC) tokens become POL tokens, which will become the Polygon proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol’s native token.

PIP-17 will include the initiation of the upgrade from MATIC to POL. This includes its transition to POL as the native gas token and staking token for the Polygon ecosystem, as well as the launch of the staking layer and migration of Polygon public chains.

PIP-18 includes the technical description of POL tokens as well as accompanying contracts that will handle emission and token migrations. POL tokens can be migrated at a 1:1 ratio from existing MATIC tokens. The PIP notes an initial supply of 10 billion and a yearly emission of 2% equally distributed between validator staking rewards and a community treasury.

Lastly, PIP-19 proposes the update of the native gas token on Polygon PoS from MATIC to POL while ensuring maximum backwards compatibility.

Polygon’s announcement notes that PIP-19 will not change contracts on Polygon PoS, while the properties of the protocol’s native token will not change either. However, contracts on Ethereum that are awaiting MATIC from the native MATIC bridge may be affected by the upgrade.

Magazine: Here’s how Ethereum’s ZK-rollups can become interoperable

Shibarium wallets surpass 100K after SHIB devs relaunch bridge

August 29, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Shytoshi Kusama, the co-founder of the SHIB token, said the bridge was fixed with the help of Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

Shibarium, a new layer-2 blockchain for Shiba Inu (SHIB) has surpassed 100,000 wallets on its platform with 35,000 coming within 24 hours of Shibarium's relaunch on Aug. 28.

Shytoshi Kusama, the lead developer and co-founder of Shiba Inu, confirmed Shibarium was back up and running in an Aug. 28 blog post.

At the time, Kusama noted that Shibarium tallied 65,000 wallets across 350,000 transactions — however, those figures have rocketed upwards since, respectively increasing 55.8% and 20.2%, according to Shiariumscan.io.

Shibarium’s block explorer shows that 101,277 wallets have now facilitated 420,897 transactions across 344,614 blocks, with an average block time of 5 seconds.

*The number of wallet addresses increased from 65,000 to over 100,000 within 24 hours of Shibarium re-opening. Source: Shiariumscan.io*

In a statement, Kusama said the relaunch proved that funds are, and always were safe.

The pseudonymous figure also thanked Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal for providing Shibarium assistance with its reboot:

“Quickly after the incident began, I called Sandeep from Polygon directly and without a second thought, he helped provide additional resources to ensure a perfect outcome to the situation. And that, is why our pivot to fork Polygon was the correct one.”

The relaunch of Shibarium reflected well in SHIB’s price, increasing 3.6% to $0.00000825 over the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

*SHIB price over the last 24 hours. Source: CoinGecko*

However, SHIB is still down 14.3% from its $0.00000963 price at the time of the outage.

At the time of the outage, Kusama blamed the “MASSIVE influx of transitions and users” when it went live, and later said it found a case where “thousands upon thousands of contract creation and normal transactions” in one block — which led it going into fail-safe mode.

It is estimated that about $2.5 million in funds were stuck on the bridge at the time.

Shibarium is like a new born baby who got overwhelmed by so many excited family members coming to greet meet them, this time around they're ready but please do handle it with love and care https://t.co/vbsMtILsBa
— Kaal (@kaaldhairya) August 28, 2023

In the days following, the Shibarium team claimed to have scaled the server infrastructure by 1500% to better manage congestion on-chain.

Shibarium is an Ethereum layer-2 network which utilizes SHIB for gas fees. The project focused on building gaming and metaverse applications on the platform.

Magazine: Magazine: How smart people invest in dumb memecoins — 3-point plan for success

NFT project y00ts to return $3M grant as it ditches Polygon for Ethereum

August 10, 2023 Coin Telegraph

NFT project y00ts to return M grant as it ditches Polygon for Ethereum

Coin Telegraph

DeLabs has promised to return the $3 million grant initially provided by Polygon Labs to support y00ts from Solana to Polygon.

Non-fungible token project y00ts is again switching blockchain networks, only four months after bridging the majority of its NFTs from Solana to Polygon.

DeLabs, the NFT firm behind y00ts, announced via its X (Twitter) account on Aug. 9 it will soon be migrating to Ethereum in line with its DeGods NFT collection.

1. y00ts will be migrating to Ethereum.
— y00ts (@y00tsNFT) August 9, 2023

The NFT collection had mostly migrated from Solana to Polygon in April. The move was first initially announced in December, with the migration starting officially on March 28. By March 30, Polygon announced 11,633 of a total of 15,000 y00ts NFTs had been bridged.

DeLabs said the move was to unite its y00ts community with its DeGods community. DeGods had also announced it would be bridging off Solana in December and similarly began its migration from Solana to Ethereum at the start of April.

*DeLabs’ listings of y00ts on NFT marketplace OpenSea. Source:* *OpenSea*

“We still love Polygon. It's just time to unite the DeGods & y00ts communities,” y00ts wrote in a statement.

The team has also disclosed it will be returning a $3 million grant from Polygon Labs, which it had received in January from the blockchain firm to support its migration.

“We're returning 100% of the grant provided by Polygon. The funds will be re-deployed for NFT ecosystem growth to empower builders and creators,” it said.

1. We tried our best to make it work but we just need to bring our 2 communities together.

I would appreciate it if everyone remains respectful of all parties involved.

It’s all love. https://t.co/6AT4SMUT76
— Frank (@frankdegods) August 9, 2023

The news was met with mixed reactions by members of the NFT community.

Some industry pundits offered their support and backing behind NFT project founder FrankDeGods, while others expressed concern about the seemingly diminishing state of Polygon’s NFT ecosystem.

Huge blow to the Polygon NFT ecosystem

but organic NFT demand on Polygon seems nonexistent

I support this choice, feels like it was a no brainer tbh

Happy for y00t holders, this is an easy dub https://t.co/TwWtLTpq26
— Iced (@IcedKnife) August 10, 2023

According to NFT Price Floor, DeGods and y00ts currently boast the 6th and 22nd highest floor prices at 8.66 ETH ($16,065) and 1.35 ETH ($2,465) respectively.

Magazine: NFT Collector: Snoop’s NFT nostalgia, The Goose draws Gen Y to Sotheby’s

Google Cloud to optimize Polygon zkEVM scaling performance

April 28, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Polygon Labs and Google Cloud will team up in a multi-year agreement to drive the development and adoption of the Ethereum scaling protocol’s infrastructure and developer tools.

Polygon Labs and Google Cloud announced a multi-year partnership at Consensus 2023 that will see the cloud computing service provider help boost the development of the Ethereum (ETH) scaling protocol’s tools and infrastructure.

Polygon’s core protocols, including Polygon PoS (proof-of-stake), Polygon zkEVM and Polygon Supernets, are set to benefit from the provision of Google Cloud’s framework and developer tools. The partnership is aimed at simplifying developer integration to build, launch and grow Web3 products and decentralized applications (DApp) on Polygon.

Google Cloud’s partnership with the ecosystem is expected to advance Polygon’s zero-knowledge development. Testing of Polygon zkEVM’s zero-knowledge proofs (zk-proofs) on Google Cloud reportedly resulted in faster and cheaper transactions compared to the existing infrastructure available.

The Polygon zkEVM beta, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) scaling solution, was launched to mainnet in March 2023, powering reduced transaction costs and increased throughput of smart contract deployments.

Google Cloud’s Blockchain Node Engine will be used by the Polygon ecosystem to assist with time-intensive processes and costly overheads of acquiring, maintaining and operating dedicated blockchain nodes. This specific integration intends to remove the need for Polygon developers to configure and run Polygon PoS nodes.

Polygon Labs president Ryan Wyatt highlighted the wide variety of benefits to the protocol’s ecosystem through the partnership in a statement coinciding with the roll out of the collaboration:

“Today's announcement with Google Cloud aims to increase transaction throughput enabling use cases in gaming, supply chain management, and DeFi.”

Google Cloud’s APAC managing director of engineering and Web3 go-to-market Mitesh Agarwal said its services are improving data availability, resilience and performance of scaling protocols like zk-proofs.

The partnership will also provide capital resources to Polygon ecosystem developers and companies building Web3 products and DApps. Certain early-stage Polygon Ventures-backed startups will also be able to receive newly-launched Web3-specific benefits from the Google for Startups Cloud Program.

Google Cloud’s startup accelerator program now supports 11 major blockchain firms. Meanwhile, blockchain analytics firm Nansen also announced that its data services would be available to projects in Google Cloud’s Web3 startup program.

Magazine: Here’s how Ethereum’s ZK-rollups can become interoperable

Polygon launches decentralized ID product powered by ZK proofs

March 2, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The public launch of Polygon ID comes 12 months after it was first launched in a closed-environment to a select group of builders.

Polygon, a layer-2 scaling protocol for Ethereum, has launched a zero-knowledge decentralized identity solutionto the public nearly a year after announcing its development.

The Polygon ID service uses zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs) that use cryptographic techniques to allow users to verify their identity online without having their sensitive information passed or potentially stored with a third party.

Polygon Labs publicly released Polygon ID on March 1, almost 12 months after the project was officially launched in a closed-source environment.

The Polygon team says Polygon ID was built to “solve the issue of digital trust.”

ZERO KNOWLEDGE IDENTITY FOR WEB3

The Polygon ID team is excited to announce 4 tools have been released in the #PolygonID Identity Infrastructure to build a more equitable internet that places identity at the center of it.

The future is self-sovereign⛓https://t.co/h66KyDurJE pic.twitter.com/jTBbzBNVJk
— Polygon (@0xPolygon) March 1, 2023

“What sets Polygon ID apart from most other decentralized ID frameworks is its implementation of zero-knowledge technology, allowing users to verify their identities or other credentials without necessarily revealing sensitive information,” Polygon said.

The public release introduces four new tools to the Polygon ID toolset — Verifier SDK, Issuer Node, Wallet SDK and Wallet App — that will allow Polygon developers to integrate decentralized identity into their applications.

*A simple chart explaining how Polygon ID interacts with user credentials. Source: Polygon*

Users will be able to produce zero-knowledge proofs using off-chain credentials — such as their passport, national ID or a bachelor's degree — to interact with smart contracts and verify information on-chain.

“This means that off-chain data can now be used for trustless on-chain verifications in the widely-supported Verified Credential format.”

Polygon claims it’s also the first ZK-based digital ID tool that allows users to hold credentials locally on handheld devices such as smartphones, and that users will no longer need passwords:

“Passwordless logins exchange encrypted verifiable credentials by simply scanning a QR code or connecting to a desktop wallet. Organizations can benefit from improved security, a better user experience, and productivity of their system administrators whose time is not taken up by password resets.”

The co-founder of Polygon ID, David Schwartz, said in a March 1 tweet that the product was built “on the latest decentralized identity standards” which will help protect developers and users against unauthorized access from third parties.

Polygon ID’s ZK-based technology enables developers to build solutions to allow users to store their personal information privately and securely while giving them full control over who has access to their data.
— David Schwartz (@davidsrz) March 1, 2023

"Providing identity in a way that the average consumer can use is the holy grail of digital ID adoption,” he explained in a separate press statement.

Multiple projects have already committed to integrating Polygon ID upon launch, such as Web3 infrastructure provider Kaleido, ID verification solution Fractal and Web3 community management system Collab.Land. Together they have a user base of over 4 million, according to Polygon.

Other Web3 projects, such as metaverse platform The Sandbox and blockchain builder community Guild.xyz, are in the process of integrating Polygon ID too.

Following the news, the price of Polygon’s native token, MATIC (MATIC), increased 2.5% from $1.22 to $1.25 in a matter of hours before falling back to $1.23.

Other blockchain-based ID products out in the space today include Quadrata and IDNTTY.

Polygon Labs

Canto follows moves from Astar

Not every protocol is sticking around on Ethereum

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