Polygon Miden Alpha Testnet v3 is Live

A brief update, as more pioneers pile into the Polygon Miden Alpha Telegram group and begin to build sovereign dApps on the Miden zkVM rollup: the Miden Alpha Testnet v3 is live.

Explore the Polygon Miden tutorials and start building on the testnet today.

Miden is an innovative zkVM rollup still in testnet phase, enabling users to create and execute their own zero-knowledge proofs—this is called client-side proving. Developers can build dApps that allow users to prove their local state, offering sovereignty and much higher throughput than existing architectures. 

In the context of an aggregated future with the AggLayer, Polygon Miden unlocks many new use cases, featured in recent Polygon Miden Pioneers deep dives:

• Composability Labs, building a state-minimized onchain order book
• Keom, reinterpreting DeFi with ZK wheels
• Rize Labs, building onchain ZK-verified poker

Currently, Polygon Miden Testnet v3 supports standardized user actions and smart contracts. Future updates will enable developers to execute any logic onchain or offchain, in the same way as other general-purpose blockchains. 

So what new things can developers build with the new release?

Miden Alpha Testnet v3

1. Sub-second order updates with transient notes: For sub-second order updates. Transient notes allows users to consume notes that are not yet recorded onchain, enabling a “chain of transactions” that is significantly faster than traditional block times. This is useful for applications like order-book exchanges. Imagine Alice creates a note and sends it to an order book operator; the operator can forward it directly to Bob, bypassing onchain registration and eliminating the need for Bob to wait for block finality. If Alice's note is invalid or already consumed, then Bob's transaction will fail at the network level. 
2. Transaction IDs in blocks: In Polygon Miden Alpha v3, each block contains the transaction IDs of every transaction within that block. Previously, it was difficult to figure out if a given transaction was included in the Miden chain; it was only possible by observing the effects of a transaction. Now, it's trivial.
3. Miden no-std client: Run the Miden client in a browser. Compiling the Miden client to WASM will be the basis for many Miden applications. The first application to be built will be a Miden wallet, where users can execute and prove transactions in their browser. Web-GPU is coming soon, and estimated to reach ~1s transaction speeds.
4. Note aux field: If the Note tag is insufficient, users can inject custom metadata into their notes. The aux field (~64 bits) can hold an account ID or something similar.
5. Many refactorings: Core developers refactored Polygon Miden in order to increase stability and make the code easier to read. Events and error messages were  added to the TransactionKernel to help refactor tests against a mock blockchain.
6. Improved command line interface: Each iteration of the Polygon Miden client improves the command line interface, not only for overall usability, but also approachability and aesthetics.

This new version focuses on developer-facing features, but many other changes, simplifications, and improvements have been made behind the scenes.

What's Next?

In the coming weeks, expect the following:

• A Rust compiler
• Oracle support
• Network transactions

Tune into the blog and our social channels to keep up with updates about Polygon.

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