Manta vs Near

Manta Pacific is a modular zk‑EVM Layer‑2 that stores rollup data on Celestia DA and uses universal circuits to keep prover costs low. Users can deploy privacy‑preserving smart contracts with built‑in zero‑knowledge widgets for shielding balances. The 2025 ‘Marlin’ release adds Account Abstraction and native bridges to Polkadot’s parachain ecosystem.

NEAR Protocol employs Nightshade sharding where each block contains chunks from multiple shards, and Doomslug consensus gives 1‑second near‑finality. The JavaScript SDK and Contract Aurora EVM make onboarding Web2 developers easier. In 2024 NEAR launched a chain‑signature wallet standard that leverages passkeys for seedless login.