Polygon Acquires Ethereum Scaling Startup Mir for $400M in MATIC

As reported by CoinDesk, “Ethereum layer 2 Polygon is continuing to expand its list of scaling technologies.

On Thursday, Polygon announced a $400 million acquisition of Mir, a project focusing on zero-knowledge proofs. The announcement was made at Polygon’s “zk day” virtual event by co-founders Mihailo Bjelic, Jaynti Kanani and Sandeep Nailwal.

“The industry is still in an early phase when it comes to scaling and blockchain infrastructure in general,” said Bjelic in a statement. “One of the key missing components required to build highly scalable solutions has been performant recursive proof systems; they simply haven’t existed so far. This ends today.”

The purchase was executed with 250 million MATIC tokens at a price of $1.60; since the agreement MATIC has risen to $2.18.

Layer 2s are among the fastest growing blockchain networks per the closely-watched total value locked (TVL) metric. Arbitrum, which uses optimistic rollup scaling technology, recently cracked the top 10 in TVL at $2.23 billion.

The buy marks a trend for the rapidly-expanding Polygon. In August, Polygon cut a $250 million check to merge with Hermez Network, another Zero-Knowledge scaling solution, using a token swap.

The buys aim to make Polygon a multipurpose scaling solution for Ethereum – a significant strategy shift from what used to be branded as an Ethereum competitor.”