Quick take:
- NEAR Protocol has chosen Wormhole to be its official bridge.
- The company also launched its first Ethereum bridge powered by zero-knowledge proofs.
- This will allow NEAR assets to seamlessly bridge to more than 20 chains connected to Wormhole.
NEAR Protocol has announced a partnership with Wormhole to power its bridging network. The Layer1 blockchain said on Tuesday that Wormhole will be its official bridge. The company also launched its first Ethereum bridge powered by zero-knowledge proofs.
This partnership will allow NEAR assets to seamlessly bridge to more than 20 chains connected to Wormhole. It will also help NEAR to onboard its ecosystem with communities drawn from hundreds of Wormhole-powered apps.
Traditionally, cross-chain bridges rely on an optimistic verification process, which assumes that any messages sent through the bridge are considered to be correct unless verifiers submit valid fraud proofs during the verification window.
As a result, apps and bridge users have put trust in some entities to secure the protocols. The optimistic verification process last year came under scrutiny following multiple breaches, headlined by the $625 million Ronin Bridge hack.
NEAR believes that bridging protocols of the future will be powered by zero-knowledge proofs. A zk-proof allows systems to securely execute transactions without revealing all the information of the parties involved.
Announcing the partnership on Tuesday, Wormhole wrote: “Wormhole core contributors will be joining zPoken and others across the NEAR ecosystem to develop the first-of-its-kind ZK light clients that can prove and verify Ethereum and NEAR state without the assumptions required by traditional bridges.”
The ZK light clients will form the foundation for building the first zero-knowledge NEAR <> ETH corridor.
Dan Reecer, Head of Operations at Wormhole Foundation commented: “We are excited to be selected as the next official bridge for NEAR Protocol to launch ZK-enabled cross-chain communication with Ethereum. We’re confident that this will be a new paradigm for enabling trustless cross-chain messaging and state access across the crypto ecosystem.”
More details of this development will be released in the coming weeks, with the company confident this will herald the beginning of a new paradigm for enabling trustless cross-chain messaging.
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