What Ethereum's Merge Means for Mina's ZKPs

2022.09.15

What Ethereum's Merge Means for Mina's ZKPs

How will Mina, as a global zero-knowledge layer for privacy and proofs, collaborate with Ethereum after the merge?

2022.09.15 - 10:00:41

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How will Mina, as a global zero-knowledge layer for privacy and proofs, collaborate with Ethereum after the merge?

What Ethereum's Merge Means for Mina's ZKPs

By Phil Kelly

Note: This article was written prior to the Ethereum Merge.

The Ethereum Merge is expected to complete within the next 24 hours, and members of O(1) Labs and the Mina ecosystem are preparing to celebrate. This is a great opportunity to explain why we care so deeply about Ethereum’s successful merge—and to clarify how Mina, as the global zero-knowledge layer for privacy and proofs, will collaborate with Ethereum post-merge.

First, let’s revisit the technical connections between Mina and Ethereum, which were recently updated in our roadmap:

SnarkyJS will be able to verify Ethereum-compatible signatures on-chain, enabling developers to build zkApps that prove ownership of accounts on Ethereum or any other EVM-compatible chain.
The Mina state root will be stored and updated in a dedicated smart contract on Ethereum mainnet, jointly developed by the Ethereum and Mina Foundations. Initially announced as a “bridge,” this integration more accurately enables data transfer between chains without introducing new security assumptions—effectively making Mina part of the Ethereum ecosystem.
MetaMask will integrate directly with Mina via MetaMask’s Snaps API.

Looking ahead, here are some examples of potential data flows and smart contract interactions:

Proving identity/reputation-related activities on Ethereum: SnarkyJS circuits will read relevant state on Ethereum (such as NFT holdings, DeFi protocol interactions, 'OG'-ness), prove statements like “top 5% most active users,” verify and store the proof on Mina. The Mina state will then be bridged back to Ethereum, making the proof available for native Ethereum use cases—such as tiered fees in DeFi protocols based on prior activity (eventually aggregated across multiple chains), or targeted NFT airdrops based on a user’s NFT history.
Privacy-preserving gated anonymous chat based on Ethereum activity: A Mina zkApp built with SnarkyJS will read relevant Ethereum state (e.g., NFT holdings, DeFi interactions, 'OG'-ness), generate proofs for claims such as “contributor to a Gitcoin grant,” verify and store the proof on Mina, then provide it to a private chat service to enable access.

How does the Merge affect these plans?

The roadmap remains unchanged!

We launched Mina over a year ago as the first succinct, ZK-based blockchain and Web3 state layer. The SnarkyJS framework for building off-chain zero-knowledge smart contract circuits (zkApps) went live in Junehere.

Key advantages of using SnarkyJS include:

Built on TypeScript, making it accessible even to developers without cryptography expertise
Circuits require no trusted setup (thanks to Kimchi, based on Plonk15)
Supports infinite “recursive” routines, allowing an unlimited number of transactions to be compressed into constant-sized proofs
Optimized with custom gates and WASM for efficient execution in browsers

Currently, zkApps can be deployed on the Mina QA network, and we’re rapidly progressing toward a final incentivized testnet for zkApps.

This week, O(1) Labs welcomed a new cohort of ZK buildersinto the program, who will join the growing list of existing zkApp projects. Additionally, since June we’ve been collaborating with SnarkyJS launch partnersto gather feedback on the framework and help them ship code.

Finally, we’re incredibly excited about the upcoming Merge—an event that demonstrates the Web3 community’s ability to execute a highly complex and meaningful decentralized upgrade. It will also bring significant sustainability benefits, many of which are already enjoyed by blockchains like Mina Protocol that use PoS consensus.

If you're interested in building zkApps, please reach out—we welcome any questions about how zkApps can be used within Ethereum.

And if you're new to all this, check out the links below to join our ZKP movement!

Learn the basics using materials from SnarkyJS Launch Weekhere, and if you're a developer, start building zkAppshere.
Read our announcement about the launch partner programhere, where Web3 innovators in privacy and authentication—like Brave Browser, SISMO, and DIA—are building ZK smart contracts with SnarkyJS and providing valuable feedback.
Stay tuned as we move closer to the incentivized testnet.