April was a productive and fast-paced month for the Nomos project, with significant progress made on Nomos Sovereign Zones. The month culminated in a dynamic offsite off the coast of Croatia, a week-long coworking session held to solve our team’s most stubborn problems. With key research decisions reached and trailblazing proof-of-concepts developed, the Nomos Team is now squarely on track to build and launch its initial version.

Monthly Updates

Before the offsite, the Nomos Team was hard at work finalising specifications for components of the project. The specification for the Nomos P2P network was finalized and entered the review phase. Research on the Nomos economic model advanced as initial transaction fee specifications were completed, and reviews continued into the NomosDA fee market design. The Blend Protocol specification moved from internal review to the public directory for its v1 protocol, with key updates to the Node Communication Strategy Guide.

In terms of development, the core synchronization algorithm and supporting networking stack were implemented and reviewed, with an optimization identified that simplifies sync by reusing the block processing logic. Preparations for merging into the master branch were completed, and semi-integration tests are ongoing. A key milestone was the publication of Sovereign Zone blocks to the NomosDA layer, a major step toward establishing functional applications on Sovereign Zones.

Offsite in Croatia

Between the 21st and 26th of April, the Nomos Team convened on a charming island in the Adriatic sea, determined to resolve the project’s remaining roadblocks at Nomos’ 6th offsite. Particularly important was the shift of focus toward Sovereign Zones, with a quasi-hackathon organised to create the first prototypes for applications running on these Zones.

As at previous offsites, the team was split into mostly independent workgroups, each of which had its own dedicated focus. These workgroups concentrated on the Nomos Architecture, Sovereign Zone and Validium prototypes, NomosDA, and Support areas of the project.

Architecture

The Architecture workgroup primarily dealt with tasks relating to Bedrock and Bedrock Services. The group introduced causal finality as a way to increase practical finality for Sovereign Zones. Causal finality creates strict causal relationships between transactions, resulting in near-instant practical certainty about the Zone state.

The Architecture workgroup also devised a form of the Cryptarchia consensus mechanism with public notes, using a Private Proof of Stake lottery that preserves the winner’s anonymity without the need to hide note information. As a result, the Mantle was redesigned to only include public notes. Initial concepts for rewards and Service fees on the Mantle were also produced.

Sovereign Zones and Validiums

Several core contributors spent the offsite demonstrating the power of Sovereign Zones. In a sort of quasi-hackathon, they produced prototype applications that run on Nomos to showcase some of the possible use cases for Nomos Sovereign Zones. One such application was a fully EVM-equivalent Zone with a Uniswap fork deployed on it. The user could swap tokens and provide liquidity, with Zone data pushed to NomosDA and correct execution proven via Zero Knowledge proofs. Light nodes were able to verify these proofs as well as the correct encoding and dispersal of the data.

Another group created a Nomos validium using zkSync, with transactions executed on the Zone and Nomos used as a data availability layer. This Zone was used to successfully deploy a Uniswap application similar to the EVM Zone described earlier.

Data Availability

The Data Availability workgroup was hard at work designing improvements to NomosDA, Nomos’ data availability service. Three different protocols were simulated to determine the data availability service for Nomos’ needs. The NomosDA V2 idea, based on simultaneous encoding and proof generation using ZODA, was rejected due to inefficiencies when used with smaller blob sizes. NomosDA V3, based on bivariate expansion, was shelved as the original protocol demonstrated better performance. Ultimately, the original NomosDA V1 protocol was chosen, with an optimisation that reduces the proofs required to one per column. A reward system for DA nodes was also devised by the Data Availability workgroup.

Support

The Support and Experimentation workgroup consisted primarily of developers who worked to assist the other groups when necessary. They were responsible for implementing and debugging proofs of concepts such as the optimised NomosDA, as well as fixing bugs on the Nomos testnet. The group also presented a potential synchronisation solution for nodes that need to bootstrap their local chain when joining the protocol or after a prolonged period of inactivity.

Conclusion

After the offsite, the Nomos Team spent a refreshing several days at a seaside resort in Split, and returned home ready to tackle the remaining challenges on the project’s road to mainnet. The offsite not only reaffirmed the strength and cohesion of the Nomos Team, but also validated the project’s focus on Sovereign Zones through real, functioning prototypes. With foundational systems in place and early applications already demonstrating Nomos’ potential, the path forward is clear. In the coming months, the focus shifts to refining the specifications and steadily progressing toward the first public release of Nomos.