Wormhole Foundation Awards Contributor Grant to Zpoken to Advance Trustless ZK Transfers for NEAR and Ethereum

The Wormhole Foundation, a research and development organization dedicated to interoperability between blockchains, is excited to announce a Contributor Grant to the team at Zpoken. The addition of the Zpoken team to Wormhole’s decentralized set of contributors is a major step forward for Wormhole's platform in the context of trustless verification of cross-chain messages using Zero Knowledge (ZK) technology, as outlined in the recently published Wormhole ZK Roadmap. Zpoken has established itself as a key player in the field of ZK technology globally, notably with its work on the NEAR ZK Light Client.

Wormhole’s capabilities will include the first trustless, zero knowledge Ethereum-to-NEAR corridor. This bi-directional bridge will enable all major NEAR and Ethereum-based assets to be transferred across chains without needing to trust any centralized actors for message verification, despite Wormhole currently having the most trusted set of decentralized validators (see Uniswap’s Bridge Assessment), the Wormhole Guardians. Given Wormhole’s modular and flexible technology stack, Wormhole Guardians will continue to verify messages for any corridor not yet integrated with ZK proofs.

Robinson Burkey, Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Wormhole Foundation, remarked, "Offering our developer community trustless verification for their messages between Ethereum and NEAR will be a major milestone. The Foundation is very excited to add Zpoken to the decentralized team of collaborators and the integration of their ZK technology into Wormhole's interoperability platform, and we look forward to rolling this technology out to developers."

Mike Yezhov, CEO of Zpoken added, “Integrating cryptographic commitments into economic models to enhance the interoperability of the decentralized web is an incredibly exciting endeavor. We are thrilled to contribute our expertise in NEAR Zero-Knowledge light clients to some of the largest and most promising interoperability protocols within the Web3 ecosystem. This contribution represents a significant step forward in securing and streamlining the interaction between diverse blockchain networks, thereby unlocking new possibilities for decentralized applications and services.”

For further inquiries and collaboration opportunities, please contact the Wormhole Foundation at [email protected].

About Zpoken

Zpoken is a full-stack Web3 development organization that specializes in the development and implementation of ZK technology, cryptography solutions and decentralized tech. Their work on the Near ZK Light Client is instrumental in advancing the field of trustless cross-chain communication, offering a new paradigm of privacy and security in blockchain technology.

About Wormhole Foundation

The Wormhole Foundation is the steward of Wormhole - the world’s first generalized messaging protocol. Our mission is to empower passionate people in the research and development of blockchain interoperability technologies. Through grants, research, and ecosystem programs, we seek to enable teams to build secure, open-source, and decentralized products within the Wormhole ecosystem. If you’re interested in helping achieve our mission, follow us on Twitter or contact us at [email protected].

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