What Polygon’s partnership with Near Protocol means for you

• The new zkWasm solution would enable Near Protocol to access Ethereum’s big liquidity pool.
• Polygon developers will have the option to build using the programming language of their choice.

Ethereum [ETH] scaling solution Polygon Labs [MATIC] announced a partnership with layer-1 blockchain Near Protocol [NEAR] in a bid to boost cross-chain interoperability.

As per details shared in a blog post, the two entities joined hands to develop zkWasm, a zero-knowledge (ZK) protocol for WebAssembly (Wasm) blockchains. The aim was to bridge the gap between Wasm blockchains and Ethereum ecosystem.

Let’s understand the tech of it all

It’s well known that Ethereum pioneered the development of decentralized applications (dApps) through Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) – the standard on which all protocols on Ethereum run.

Owing to the popularity and apparent interoperability benefits, many other blockhains like the BNB Chain [BNB], Avalanche [AVAX], and Polygon, became EVM-compatible.

While thousands of dApps have reaped the benefits of EVM, the solution began to show its limitations in recent years.

One of the foremost was the lack of popular language options available to developers apart from Solidity. It was a time-consuming and difficult process for anyone who wished to use a different language to work in this ecosystem.

The Wasm technology has been viewed as the main competitor to the EVM. Wasm expands the family of languages available to smart contract developers to include Rust, C/C++, and C#.

The high-performance framework has been used for running complex programs in web browsers, including Google and Mozilla.

A new feat in cross-chain interoperability

Interestingly, Near Protocol allows developers to employ the Wasm technology to build dApps. The new zkWasm solution therefore intended to act as the bridge, enabling Near to access Ethereum’s big liquidity pool.

Moreover, the collaboration would give additional options for Polygon developers. Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, while responding to the news of the partnership, said on X (formerly Twitter),

“Polygon Ecosystem gets Wasm appchains, perhaps even with Near mainnet codebase, where devs can build a sharded smart contracts platform where app devs can build smart contracts using any programming language of their choice like C++, Rust, and many others.”

Furthermore, developers would have the flexibility either to launch an EVM chain, or build a WASM chain for closer Ethereum alignment and access to liquidity.

According to an official X post by Near Protocol, the product was under development as of press time and slated to launch next year.

The partnership was just one of many initiatives undertaken by Web3 companies to strengthen cross-chain interoperability. The hot trend could pave the way for creation of powerful new products and services that leverage the benefits of multiple networks simultaneously.

MATIC reacts positively

The news of the deal increased demand for Polygon’s native coin, MATIC. The cryptocurrency jumped 8.39% to $0.82 at press time, the highest since mid-July, according to CoinMarketCap.

The thirteenth-largest crypto by market cap benefitted from the prevailing bullish sentiments in the market. Since the 19th of October, MATIC has increased by more than 60%, making it one of the top performing altcoins.

Notably, whale accumulation has assisted the growth significantly. According to on-chain analytics firm Santiment, wallets holding between 100,000- 10 million MATICs added 42.88 million coins in the last two weeks.

Additionally, 161 whale transactions worth more than $100,000 were recorded on 8 November, the highest since July.

Source: Santiment

Read Polygon’s [MATIC] Price Prediction 2023-24

On the other hand, NEAR saw a comparatively subdued response. The coin was exchanging hands at $1.5 at press time, with gains of just 2.28%.

Having said that, the broader market bullishness turned the fortunes for NEAR as well. The coin enjoyed monthly gains of nearly 39% at the time of writing.