The provider of Ethereum layer 2, Polygon‘s ZK, launched Miden Alpha to compete with StarkWare’s tech stack, Starknet.
Polygon, a solution provider for Ethereum layer 2, introduced an alpha version testnet of its latest zero-knowledge rollup (ZK-rollup), also known as Miden. This solution depends on cryptographic proofs to identify the changes made in the network.
The roll-up is there to check the authenticity of the transactions and add them to the mainnet.
A post shared on X by Polygon on May 6 stated that Miden Alpha is now available for the developers to start testing. ZK-rollup designs Miden to increase the capabilities of the Ethereum network.
Miden: Polygon’s ZK Advanced Rollup Solution
The basics of ZK-rollups are to allow third-party batch transactions along with the network and then process them individually. This process increases the speed of processing on the network and processes transactions without revealing them to the network.
In Miden, users can “locally generate proofs for their own state transitions without having to disclose the state to the network,” Polygon stated. This helps to reduce the network burden and improve privacy and scalability.
Source: Polygon
Miden introduced additional functions such as private accounts and enabling transactions where just the hash of the account is stored on a chain.
Miden uses parallel transaction executions, allowing it to process transactions simultaneously. This results in significantly higher bandwidth than the Ethereum mainnet and helps reduce blockchain node state bloat.
Other main features of Miden include customizable smart contracts and customized node scripts. This helps users write their own scripts using the Miden virtual machine or programming language.
Miden steps in the market to compete with StarkWare’s layer-2 scaling network, and other competitors like Matter Labs’ zkSync Era.
Polygon also develops a scaling solution named zkEVM, which is comparable to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This allows most existing smart contracts, tools, and wallets to operate smoothly.
The polygon token did not react to the launch of Testnet, showing a declining trend by trading at a price of $0.718, 7.46% down from the previous day.
