You Won’t Believe What These Ex-Meta Engineers Are Doing With $25M and Your Laptop

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There are moments in life, dear reader, when destiny, dressed as a venture capitalist, waltzes into the drawing room and whispers, “You simply must have this blockchain.” So it is with Miden, that mysterious child, emerging from the Polygon (POL) Labs’ Agglayer Breakout Program—a debutante if ever there was one, except debutantes rarely attract the attentions of a16z crypto, 1kx, Hack VC, or that genteel circle gazing fondly from their ledgers: Rune Christensen of MakerDAO, Sreeram Kannan of EigenLayer, and so forth.

The world shifts beneath our feet. Polygon—ever the ambitious parent—watches as Miden, led by those former Meta blockchain engineers with such tragically poetic names (Bobbin Threadbare, Dominik Schmid, and Azeem Khan), sets out to construct an “edge blockchain.” My friends, imagine: not a ponderous colossus squatting in distant data centers, but a creature so lightfooted it vaults onto the very desk where you keep your afternoon tea (or your questionable browser history). 🍵💻

What is this edge blockchain, you ask? A vision both mad and daring. Imagine shifting the toil—some might say drudgery—from the world’s great server-farms onto your own hapless device. Faster apps, privacy intact (unless your roommate peeks over your shoulder), all scaling like the ambitions of a minor Russian count. Gone is the need to fight for table scraps on a glutted, overburdened chain; now, your phone does the heavy lifting! At last, my iPhone will feel the purpose Steve Jobs always intended.

Confidentiality and auditability

Execution now relaxes at the client side, and developers can craft constructions so Byzantine that not even the tsar’s secret police could hope to untangle them. Hybrid public-private states, dazzling logic, and the delicate balance—so close to our own hearts—between keeping secrets and getting caught. 😏🔍

Miden, every inch the dutiful offspring, will distribute a generous 10% of its homegrown tokens to the diligent POL stakers, as is the new tradition. Today, it struts through alpha releases and courts developers in the Pioneer program. Wei Dai of 1kx, that oracle in a cravat, assures us that Miden tips its hat to fragmentation, scaling bottlenecks, and privacy, and sweeps them out the back door.

The fresh millions secured (ahem, $25m, for those attending this soirée late), Miden now readies itself for a mainnet launch “later this year”—which, like every Russian spring, may or may not arrive on time. Until then, let us toast to progress, privacy, and apps that, like uninvited guests, now make themselves quite at home on our own devices. 🥂

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2025-04-29 17:28