Polygon launches Nightfall to provide enterprise solutions via ZKP tech

Polygon‘s Head of Enterprise, Antoni Martin, gave the keynote speech at the 2022 EY Global Blockchain Summit and introduced Polygon Nightfall, the company’s new zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) solution that offers privacy for companies that want to use Ethereum blockchain.

According to Martin’s speech, Polygon Nightfall produces eight times faster results than Ethereum base layers, transfers non-private ERC20s for six times cheaper, and is fully public.

Nightfall is one of Polygon’s four scalability solutions. The other three, Polygon Hermez, Polygon Miden, and Polygon Zero have different strengths. Polygon Nightfall differentiates itself as the one solution with enhanced privacy.

Combining zero knowledge with optimistic rollups

The Polygon Nightfall combines privacy-preserving ZKPs and optimistic rollups. It uses optimistic rollups to reduce transaction fees and utilizes ZKPs to provide privacy.

The privacy-preserving rollups only disclose the time and date of the transaction while keeping the rest private. Optimistic rollups, on the other hand, assume all transactions are valid but still allow validators to oppose one transaction if they think it is inaccurate.

During his presentation, Martin said that Nightfall could be used in business operations such as supply chain management, transactions of private NFT markets, and blockchain mixers.

EY and Polygon

Ernst & Young (EY) started working on Nightfall in 2019 to enable its customers to use Ethereum privately. However, the project halted when the company had to combat Ethereum’s high gas fees in September 2021. To cut the costs of private transactions, EY partnered with Polygon.

EY’s two blockchain services, EY OpsChain and EY Blockchain Analyser are already connected to Polygon Nightfall.

Polygon’s Co-Founder Sandeep Nailwal commented on this partnership and said:

“The EY commitment to the public Ethereum ecosystem and to open standards was a big driver in evolving shared approaches. No other organization has made the same scale of commitment to the ecosystem and to open systems, or brings the depth of technology that the EY organization has in this space.”

According to the announcement, the duo will continue to innovate on enterprise-friendly solutions that prioritize privacy to grow their ecosystem.

Are ZKPs the next big thing?

A report from Mina Foundation revealed that ZKPs have recently played a significant role in the crypto sphere.

According to the survey, improved privacy and scalability are the two main things that make ZKPs attractive. Nearly all participants (90.1%) said they found cryptocurrencies with an implemented ZKP solution more attractive. In addition, 52.1% also said they’d be more likely to use a dApp with imğlemented ZKPs.