Canto, a Layer 1 blockchain focused on advancing decentralized finance to better facilitate impactful adoption at the application layer, is migrating to a zero-knowledge Layer 2 on Ethereum powered by Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK) as it looks to build a blockchain dedicated to real world assets. 

Launched in 2022 as a permissionless general-purpose blockchain, Canto provides an EVM execution layer and core financial primitives, including a decentralized exchange, lending market, and unit of account (NOTE). Core protocol-level development and improvements are the result of the Canto Commons, an open and permissionless framework for coordinating the decentralized public protocol.

So what will a migration to an Ethereum ZK-powered L2 look like for the Canto community?

Canto’s Ethos, Extended

Polygon CDK is permissionless and open source tech that can be leveraged to design and build ZK chains to reflect any community’s ethos. Chains designed with CDK retain independence without sacrificing modularity, and join a unified ecosystem of ZK L2s connected to one another, with fast and seamless access to Ethereum. 

What does this mean for Canto?

If agreement is reached by the Canto Commons, core devs will be able to build a ZK L2 that extends the community’s defining ethos of permissionless sovereignty and liquidity as a public good. By leveraging a shared ZK bridge, Canto will eventually tap the liquidity of a unified Polygon ecosystem with easy access to Ethereum. User security comes by way of a best-in-class and in-production ZK prover, meaning community security is ensured by cryptography and inherited from Ethereum, rather than the social-economic incentives of fraud proofs.

By joining a growing number of chains that extends blockspace, the move reflects a significant step toward a “neofinance” future, or the protocolization of existing finance.

Neofinance envisions a new era of financial efficiencies, unlocked at scale, by deploying offchain assets on protocol rails. Blockchain-specific advantages of efficiency, access, and composability can be unlocked for offchain assets through the modular design of Polygon CDK.

But neofinance at scale requires deep liquidity, without sacrificing security. Only trustlessness and the decentralization inherent for an Ethereum ZK-powered L2, in an unified ecosystem of liquidity, can make it possible–all fixed with Polygon CDK.

Canto will tap a Plonky2 ZK proving implementation, while keeping a proof-of-stake validator set for decentralized sequencing. There will be no changes for Canto’s validators or stakers, while users enjoy greater decentralization and trustless guarantees when bridging assets. Canto developers will transition to using a shared ZK bridge for canonical assets.

For more details on Canto, visit the documentation and connect at canto.io. Tune into the Polygon Labs Blog and social channels to keep up with updates about the Polygon ecosystem.

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