- The Polygon Chain Development Kit has gotten a major boost from NEAR.
- The development promises to be a boon for payments-focused projects building with the CDK.
- Polygon Labs and the NEAR Foundation are fostering a close relationship to bolster CDK development.
As the battle for Layer 2 dominance intensifies, Polygon Labs has focused on bolstering its Chain Development Kit (CDK) , its tech stack for spinning out Layer 2 chains. In the latest instance, the project has gotten a hand from NEAR in a move that promises to make the cost of fees of Layer 2 chains building with the CDK even cheaper.
NEAR DA × Polygon CDK
In an X post on Thursday, January 18, NEAR Protocol announced that it had integrated its data availability layer with the Polygon CDK, promising to offer data storage costs 85,000 times cheaper than the Ethereum mainnet .
Data availability solutions have become popular as they provide a solution to one of the issues facing rollups, the high cost of data storage on Ethereum, which is reflected in the fees paid for transactions by the end users and the speed of these transactions. They do so by storing the data off-chain and proving that it exists.
Integrating NEAR’s data availability solution with the CDK offers developers who do not mind sacrificing a bit of security for speed and lower fees yet another option to choose from to navigate the problem.
These options are particularly useful for FinTech-focused projects. With integrating NEAR’s solution, developers building with the CDK now have three data availability options, including Celestia and the Ethereum mainnet.
The recent data availability solution integration is the latest development from a growing partnership between Polygon Labs and the NEAR Foundation that has seen the latter contribute to the CDK.
Crypto’s Latest Dynamic Duo?
In November 2023, Polygon Labs and the NEAR Foundation announced a collaboration to build a zkWASM prover for the CDK. The landmark solution intends to combine Polygon Labs’ zero knowledge expertise with the NEAR Foundation’s WASM experience to unlock a new level of interoperability between WASM chains and Ethereum.
Amid the continued additions to the CDK, over 20 projects have started building Ethereum Layer 2 chains with the technology. These include Palm Network , Manta Network , and OKX.
On the Flipside
- In 2023, Polygon Labs let go of Avail, a data availability project, after two years of incubation, citing a desire to focus on more “Ethereum native” solutions.
- MATIC, the native token of the Polygon ecosystem, has underperformed the broader crypto market in the past year despite technological advancements.
Why This Matters
NEAR’s data availability solution promises to be a boon for payments-focused projects building with the CDK.
