Manta Launches Manta Pacific: The Modular Ecosystem for ZK Applications

Today, we are proud to introduce Manta Pacific, the first EVM-native modular execution layer offering an out-of-the-box toolkit for specialized ZK applications like onchain identity. It leverages Manta’s universal circuits and ZK interface with onchain composability and easy integration into web2 applications ; Celestia’s data availability layer for security and low gas fees; and Caldera’s modified OP Stack scalability. Together, Manta Pacific will enable a new generation of ZK app development.

Manta Pacific is an OP Stack layer-2 solution built on top of the Ethereum ecosystem and using Celestia for data availability. Manta Pacific differentiates from existing approaches by offering native composability for zk applications using universal circuits, which enables new ZK use cases and an ecosystem to support their growth.

Starting today, Manta Network’s L1 parachain on Polkadot will be renamed as Manta Atlantic. Building on the momentum from Manta Atlantic’s early achievements, we confidently march into web3’s next chapter — where real users and their needs are at the forefront with deployment flexibility powered with zero-knowledge.

The L2 Designed for ZK Applications

Today, there exists no home for EVM-native ZK applications. We believe that ZK applications are the next generation of decentralized apps because of the strong attention to user safety and privacy that it delivers in an otherwise normal dapp experience; thus, creating the perfect environment for ZK applications to exist is critical for the continuing growth and expansion of web3.

Current solutions do not fully address the needs of ZK applications to deploy and grow users in a scalable manner. Privacy networks that offer ZK-based private transacting don’t provide programmability for an application layer. General VM, EVM blockchains and zkEVM don’t provide the tooling to easily build and deploy ZK applications; if you manage to deploy one, your users will be burdened with high gas costs and slow performance. ZK networks that provide VM environments require developers to pick up new languages that lock those applications into specific ecosystems with limited userbases. Notable features of Manta Pacific include:

• Manta Pacific offers programmable ZK as an EVM-native L2
• Manta’s Universal Circuits enable easy ZK application development using only Solidity
• Leveraging Celestia for data availability and the OP Stack for scalability, Manta Pacific provides high scalability and low transaction fees for ZK applications

Manta Pacific takes all of the work that the Manta team has already built on ZK, and applies it directly into a scalable EVM environment specifically designed for deploying ZK applications through the help of Celestia and the OP Stack.

How Does Manta Pacific Work?

Manta Pacific is launched in the joint vision with Celestia and Optimism. By leveraging the data-availability layer provided by Celestia, the first modular consensus and data network, harnessing the advanced technology developed by p0x labs, and partnering with leading RaaS company Caldera, Manta Pacific built an accessible ZK development environment in a modular, scalable manner with multiple groundbreaking advantages:

1. Significantly Lower Gas Fees Than Other ZK Application Layers

Manta Pacific’s modular stack provides unparalleled scalability for future zkApps building on top of our ecosystem.

Manta Pacific uses Celestia as the data availability (DA) layer. Celestia uses the state of art data availability sampling — a 2-D Reed-Solomon encoding and Namespaced Merkle Tree (NMTs) — to solve the data availability problem of L2s in a trust-minimized way. Manta Pacific, which uses Celestia as the DA layer, can dramatically reduce the data portion of transaction costs on the network for the end users.

Manta Pacific uses Caldera’s customized OP Stack Rollup solution as the execution layer. OP Stack has already been adopted by top projects for rollup solutions including Coinbase, a16z and Worldcoin. As the de-facto standard of L2 scaling, especially with the recent launch of Bedrock, OP Stack offers the best interoperability, engineering maturity, and long-term ecosystem outlook. In addition to scaling the computation using OP Stack, we leverage Caldera’s stateful precompiles to further reduce the computation cost of zero-knowledge proof verification-related costs.

2. EVM + Manta’s Universal Circuits for Wide ZK Application Adoption

Manta Atlantic deployed the first generation of Universal Circuits for the web3 industry, which offered support for various zkAssets including both fungible tokens and NFTs. Through Universal Circuits on Manta Atlantic, developers only need to use high level APIs to access programmable zkAsset.

Manta Pacific unveils Universal Circuits 2.0, which elevates the developer experience specifically for deploying EVM-native ZK applications. Through Universal Circuits 2.0, Manta Pacific offers a ZK library for developers to easily call ZK-enabled contracts for their existing Solidity smart contracts and dapps.

Universal Circuits offer ZK-as-a-Service, allowing any Solidity developer to call Manta Pacific contracts through APIs to enable ZK features (such as compliant private payments for DeFi, identity verification for Web3 Social, and privacy-preserving shuffling for on-chain gaming) with just a few lines of code. Manta Pacific’s core circuit designs for its Universal Circuits include zkContracts such as zkShuffle for on-chain gaming, and additional circuits based on Semaphore, by the Privacy Scaling and Exploration (PSE) Labs from Ethereum Foundation.

3. Real Use Cases and Real Users

Manta Pacific is committed to push Celestia and OP Stack’s modularity vision even further to the ZK use case adoption frontier. Together, we are advancing the web3 industry into a collaborative era where modularism addresses key scalability issues and ZK adoptions tackle key compliance privacy concerns, unlocking the next step in mass web3 adoption. With over 300,000 zkSBTs minted on Manta’s NPO sites, and over 200,000 wallet installations, Manta has effectively introduced and verified a substantial real user base in the zk space. Across the Manta ecosystem, over 80 applications have a combined user base of 1.5m+ users. To fully leverage Manta’s powerful circuits, we look forward to introducing zkNFTs and other ZK-based features to power GameFi, SocialFi, DeFi and other growing aspects of web3. With the launch of Manta Pacific, we hope to empower more EVM-native ZK projects with Manta’s privacy muscles and drive the real ZK adoptions.

Manta Network Evolving Into A Multi-Modular Platform

With the launch of Manta Pacific, Manta Network is evolving into a multi-modular platform. Manta Pacific will reap the benefits of modular DA, and deliver a multichain experience for developers and users. The universal circuits that Manta Pacific offers will be accessible to Solidity and Rust developers without needing to learn new programming languages or understand cryptography; rather, the circuits can be called directly into existing applications to enhance and unlock new features through ZK.

The complete ecosystem of Manta Network is constituted of Manta Atlantic, our lightning-fast ZK substrate framework layer 1 solution offering compliant on-chain privacy solutions, and Manta Pacific, the world’s first EVM-native modular execution layer for wide ZK applications adoption. With these groundbreaking modules, we are confident that our real users and real use case ecosystem will continue to grow and gain widespread adoption. The recent success of our NPO, zkSBTs, and Manta Wallet adoption among 220k+ users and 80+ ecosystem partners is a testament to the promise our web3 ecosystem holds for users and developers alike.

As Manta Network moves forward, we are dedicated to the expansion and adoption of Manta Atlantic and Manta Pacific. On Manta Atlantic, we continue to push the boundaries for zkSBT and MantaPay use and adoption for Rust developers along with SDK and proof key integrations. For Manta Pacific, we are excited for the upcoming launch of Testnet to begin onboarding developers and applications to the ecosystem. Manta Network will continue to achieve growth, and with the introduction of Manta Pacific, will expand that growth into an even larger ecosystem for both web3 and web2. If you are building applications and are interested in learning more about how to build within the Manta Network ecosystem, please reach out. We welcome you to join us on the exciting adventure ahead!