Manta Network Teams Up With Web3 Companies To Promote Zero-Knowledge Technology

In a bid to promote the advancement of zero-knowledge technology, Substrate-based privacy protocol Manta Network has partnered with a coalition of 21 other zero-knowledge (ZK) technology companies, foundations, and funds to launch ZPrize – an industry-sponsored contest with $7 million worth of awards.

The ZPrize competition is modeled after XPrize and other similar contests that utilize private funds to accelerate the advancement of zero-knowledge technology to facilitate a diverse range of real-world use cases. It is a collaborative effort across the blockchain ecosystem that includes more than 32 partners and sponsors.

In addition to Manta Network, several blockchain companies and investors are supporting the ZPrize initiative. These entities include Aleo, Anoma, Parity, Celo, Polygon, Mina Protocol, Algorand Foundation, Aztec Protocol, Espresso Systems, Findora, Harmony One, Kora, Polychain Capital, Risc0, Trapdoor Tech, Zero-Knowledge Validator, 0xPARC, Ethereum Foundation, DZK, the Polkadot Pioneers Prize, and CoreWeave.

Shoumo Chu, a Manta Network Co-founder, and Core contributor explains, “We have chosen to be the architect and sponsors in the open division because we truly care about WASM ZKP performance. We view the WASM ZKP performance as the ‘last mile problem’ for mass ZKP adoption. In order to get massive ZKP and privacy adoption, we have to get ZKP prover integration with popular wallets, and having improved WASM, prover performance is the way forward.”

Teams will compete for cash prizes by developing open-source projects designed to benefit the broader blockchain universe. The primary goal of the ZPrize competition is to increase awareness of zero-knowledge cryptography’s potential while at the same time improving the baseline performance of key general algorithms as well as the diversity and availability of low-level libraries for cryptographic proofs. 

The Manta Network team has joined forces with Mina Protocol – Web3’s privacy and security layer – to architect and sponsor ZPrize’s “Open Division” competition. The competition is expressly focused on maximizing the throughput while concurrently minimizing the latency of these ZK operations on client-type devices and blockchain virtual machines. Both teams will also collaborate to solve the multi-scalar multiplication (MSM) and number-theoretic transform (NTT) operations, which are essential building blocks for ZK computations.

Alex Pruden, the COO of Aleo & Founder of the ZPrize initiative, concludes, “The sponsors of ZPrize not only represent 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’re advancing the state-of-the-art to form the bricks of the technological foundation that will scale and secure the next-generation web.”

Manta Network has busily positioned itself as an end-to-end privacy solution for DeFi, Web3, and other blockchain-based industries through its plug-and-play privacy protocol that employs advanced cryptographic solutions like zkSNARK and Groth16 zero-knowledge proofs. By partnering with other leading zero-knowledge companies, the Manta Network team intends to accelerate the groundbreaking zero-knowledge technology to help drive overall blockchain ecosystem scalability and privacy – both prerequisites for mainstream adoption.