Manta Network Partners with Web3 Consortium to Advance Zero-Knowledge Technology

Blockchain technology, while disruptive, has a few lingering issues preventing it from reaching mass adoption. Legacy blockchain networks are often criticized for their lack of scalability, interoperability, and slow throughput. While some progress has been made in these areas, lack of privacy has emerged as another critical concern that needs to be addressed quickly.

Thanks to the rapid advancements in technology, Zero-Knowledge (ZK) has emerged as a potential solution to all the problems currently hampering the blockchain industry. Since ZK is a relatively recent introduction, most of the blockchain universe is not fully aware of its potential. Aware of this, 22 Web3 and ZK companies recently formed a coalition to advance zero knowledge to support the scalability and widespread adoption of Web3 through the ZPrize competition.

In this context, Manta Networkthe Polkadot-based plug-and-play privacy protocol for Web3 and a major sponsor of the ZPrize competition, announced that it is partnering with Mina Protocol to sponsor ZPrize’s “Open Division” competition.

Manta Network and Mina Protocol will award the prize to projects that focus on maximizing throughput and minimizing latency of operations on client-like devices and blockchain-based virtual machines (VMs), in particular the WebAssembly runtime ( WASM). In addition to sponsoring the Open Division event, the Manta and Mina teams will collaborate to solve Multi-Scalar Multiplication (MSM) and Number Theoretical Transformation (NTT) operations, which are prerequisites for ZK calculations.

Shoumo Chu, co-founder and main contributor of Manta Network, clarifies, “We chose to be the architect and sponsors of the Open Division because we really care about the performance of WASM ZKP. We view WASM ZKP performance as the “last mile problem” for ZKP mass adoption. In order to achieve mass adoption of ZKP and privacy, we need to achieve ZKP Prover integration with popular wallets, and after improving WASM, Prover performance is the way forward.

Competition to accelerate the development of zero knowledge

The ZPrice is a competition open to everyone with $7 million in rewards to raise awareness and accelerate the advancement of Zero-Knowledge technology to facilitate a wide range of use cases. There are several categories in the ZPrize competition, each addressing different aspects of advancing Zero-Knowledge technology.

Several companies, funds and foundations sponsor the ZPrize competition. These organizations include 0xPARC, Aleo, The Algorand Foundation, Aztec Protocol, Anoma, CoreWeave, Celo, DZK, Ethereum Foundation, Espresso Systems, Findora, Harmony One, Manta Network, Kora, Mina Protocol, Polychain Capital, Polkadot Pioneers Prize, Polygon, RISC0, Trapdoor Tech and Zero Knowledge Validator.

In this competition, participants will build open source projects that will benefit the blockchain world as a whole while competing for cash prizes. The primary goal of the ZPrize competition is to increase awareness of the potential of zero-knowledge cryptography while improving the performance of key general algorithms and increasing the diversity and availability of low-level libraries for cryptographic proofs.

According to Alex Pruden, COO of Aleo and founder of the ZPrize initiative, “ZPrize sponsors represent not just an industry but a united community of believers in this technology. We share a collective desire to turn these exciting academic ideas into a deployed reality With the ZPrize, we are advancing the state of the art to form the building blocks of the technological foundation that will evolve and secure the next-generation Web.