Polygon Labs acquires Toposware, its third zero-knowledge (ZK) startup investment, to integrate Toposware’s technology into its ZK development teams.
With the acquisition of blockchain engineering and research firm Toposware, Polygon Labs has made its third investment in zero-knowledge (ZK) ventures in the last thirty-plus days.
Type 1 Prover, which Toposware and Polygon Labs have been working together to develop, enables Ethereum-compatible blockchains to implement zero-knowledge proofs without requiring significant modifications. Eleven engineers from Toposware will become members of the pre-existing ZK development teams at Polygon as a result of the acquisition.
The deal, according to Polygon, increases the company’s total investment in ZK technology to more than $1 billion. Mir and Hermez, two additional Ethereum scalability and privacy-focused companies, were acquired by Polygon in 2021 for a total of $650 million via multiple transactions.
By utilizing ZK technology, one party can affirm the veracity of a statement without disclosing further details. This enhances privacy in the blockchain by permitting transaction validation without revealing transaction details.
“We are always exploring potential acquisitions to strengthen our ZK research and development efforts,” a spokesperson for Polygon told Cointelegraph, adding that no other deals are being considered at the moment. “ZK technology is propelling our efforts on multiple fronts.”
It is anticipated that by 2030, Web3 services in isolation will necessitate around 90 billion ZK-proofs, which is equivalent to 83,000 transactions per second. Numerous cryptocurrency companies, including StarkWare and Matter Labs, are developing ZK technology.
Recently, Matter Labs, the developer of the layer-2 solution zkSync, initiated a trademark dispute concerning ZK technology by attempting to acquire the intellectual property rights necessary to trademark the term “ZK.”
Shortly thereafter, the company retracted the request in response to criticism from researchers and the cryptocurrency community. Polygon’s action intended to “steal” a common good:
“This is a serious issue. They are essentially trying to steal people’s hard work. We believe that ZK is a common good […] We will explore legal action if necessary. We are glad they have decided to abandon their “ZK” trademark; however, they are seeking other ZK-related trademarks that we still view as highly problematic.”