Polkadot awards Manta $750K to advance ZKP for Web3 privacy

Polkadot Pioneers Prize, a treasury with 20 million DOT tokens and which targets driving development within the Polkadot ecosystem and Web3, has awarded $750k to Manta Network, the blockchain platform confirmed in a news release shared on Wednesday.

The award will help Manta, an interoperability network that seeks to enhance privacy protections for Web3 platforms, to advance its zero-knowledge technology.

The funds are part of the ZPrize initiative that aims at deploying private funds towards projects seeking to make it possible for the mass adoption of zero-knowledge proofs.

Manta fits this category with its work on two key applications (1) multiscalar multiplication (MSM) and (2) number-theoretic transform (NTT). The two are critical building blocks in computations involving ZK operations, especially in optimizing WebAssembly (WASM) runtime.

Shoumo Chu, Manta co-founder and core contributor said:

Manta will open-source its solution to allow the broader community tap into its benefit, with further developments in ZK providing the base for a more decentralized, interoperable and secure ecosystem.

Polkadot Pioneers Prize is one of the firms that sponsor the larger Zprize challenge. The others include Polygon, Algorand, Aztec Protocol, Celo, Ethereum Foundation, Harmony One, Polychain Capital and Trapdoor Tech.